nice

NICE(2)			  Linux Programmer’s Manual		      NICE(2)



NAME
       nice - change process priority

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int nice(int inc);

DESCRIPTION
       nice  adds  inc	to the nice value for the calling pid.	(A large nice
       value means a low priority.)  Only the superuser may specify  a	nega-
       tive increment, or priority increase.

RETURN VALUE
       On  success, zero is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set appropriately.

ERRORS
       EPERM  A non-super user attempts to do a priority increase by  supply-
	      ing a negative inc.

CONFORMING TO
       SVr4,  SVID  EXT,  AT&T, X/OPEN, BSD 4.3. However, the Linux and glibc
       (earlier than glibc 2.2.4) return value	is  nonstandard,  see  below.
       SVr4 documents an additional EINVAL error code.

NOTES
       Note  that the routine is documented in SUSv2 and POSIX 1003.1-2003 to
       return the new nice value, while the Linux syscall and  (g)libc	(ear-
       lier  than  glibc  2.2.4)  routines return 0 on success.	 The new nice
       value can be found using getpriority(2).	 Note that an  implementation
       in  which  nice returns the new nice value can legitimately return -1.
       To reliably detect an error, set errno to 0 before the call, and check
       its value when nice returns -1.

SEE ALSO
       nice(1), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), fork(2), renice(8)



Linux				  2001-06-04			      NICE(2)