NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

       nice - change process priority

SYNOPSIS    [Toc]    [Back]

       #include <unistd.h>

       int nice(int inc);

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

       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 negative
       increment, or priority increase.

RETURN VALUE    [Toc]    [Back]

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

ERRORS    [Toc]    [Back]

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

CONFORMING TO    [Toc]    [Back]

       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    [Toc]    [Back]

       Note  that  the	routine  is documented in SUSv2 to return the new nice
       value, while the Linux syscall and (g)libc (earlier 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    [Toc]    [Back]

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



Linux				  2001-06-04			       NICE(2)