NAME

nice − run a command at a different priority

SYNOPSIS

command

/usr/bin/nice [ −increment | −n increment ] command [ arguments ]

csh Builtin

nice [ −/+increment ] [ command ]

AVAILABILITY

SUNWcsu

DESCRIPTION

/usr/bin/nice executes command with a lower CPU scheduling priority.  The priocntl(1) command is a more general interface to scheduler functions. 

The invoking process (generally the user’s shell) must be in a scheduling class that supports the /usr/bin/nice command. 

nice is also a csh built-in command which behaves differently than the command version.  See csh(1) for description. 

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

−increment

−n increment If the increment argument (in the range 1−19) is given, it is used; if not, an increment of 10 is assumed. 

The super-user may run commands with priority higher than normal by using a negative increment, for example, −−10.  A negative increment assigned by an unprivileged user is ignored. 

If the csh is used, the syntax on this man page does not apply, unless /usr/bin/nice is invoked at the beginning of the command line.  Instead, refer to csh(1) for a different nice syntax. 

OPERANDS

The following operands are supported:

command The name of a command that is to be invoked.  If command operand names any of the special built-in utilities (see shell_builtins(1)), the results are undefined. 

argument Any string to be supplied as an argument when invoking command.

ENVIRONMENT

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of nice: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, PATH, and NLSPATH. 

EXIT STATUS

If command is invoked, the exit status of nice will be the exit status of command; otherwise, nice will exit with one of the following values:

1-125 An error occurred in the nice utility. 

126 command was found but could not be invoked. 

127 command could not be found. 

SEE ALSO

csh(1), nohup(1), priocntl(1), shell_builtins(1), nice(2), environ(5)

NOTES

An increment larger than 19 is equivalent to 19. 

SunOS 5.5/SPARC  —  Last change: 17 Feb 1995