NAME
nice —
set program scheduling
priority
LIBRARY
library “libc”
SYNOPSIS
#include
<unistd.h>
int
nice(int
incr);
DESCRIPTION
The
nice()
function obtains the scheduling priority of the process from the system and
sets it to the priority value specified in incr. The
priority is a value in the range -20 to 20. The default priority is 0; lower
priorities cause more favorable scheduling. Only the super-user may lower
priorities.
Children inherit the priority of their parent processes via fork(2).
RETURN VALUES
Upon successful completion, nice() returns
the new nice value. Otherwise, -1 is returned, the process' nice value is
not changed, and errno is set appropriately.
ERRORS
The nice() function will fail if:
- [
EPERM] - The incr argument is negative and the calling process does not have super-user privileges.
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
A nice() syscall appeared in
Version 6 AT&T UNIX.