NAME

nice − change priority of a process

SYNOPSIS

int nice (incr)
int incr;

HP-UX COMPATIBILITY

Level: HP-UX/RUN ONLY

Origin: System V

DESCRIPTION

Nice adds the value of incr to the nice value of the calling process.  A process’s nice value is a positive number for which a more positive value results in lower CPU priority. 

A maximum nice value of 39 and a minimum nice value of 0 are imposed by the system.  Requests for values above or below these limits result in the nice value being set to the corresponding limit. 

­[EPERM] Nice will fail and not change the nice value if incr is negative or greater than 40 and the effective user ID of the calling process is not super-user. 

RETURN VALUE

Upon successful completion, nice returns the new nice value minus 20.  Otherwise, a value of −1 is returned and errno is set to indicate the error. 

Note that nice assumes a user process priority value of 20.  If the super-user of your system has changed the user process priority value to something less than 20, certain increments can cause nice to return −1, which is indistinguishable from an error return. 

HARDWARE DEPENDENCIES

Integral PC:
The super-user capabilities are provided to the normal user.

SEE ALSO

nice(1), exec(2), rtprio(2). 

Hewlett-Packard  —  last mod. May 11, 2021