INDEX

NAME, SYNOPSIS, DESCRIPTION, RETURN VALUE, ERRORS, CONFORMING TO, NOTES, SEE ALSO, COLOPHON

NICE 2 2007-07-26 "Linux" "Linux Programmer's Manual"

NAME

nice - change process priority

SYNOPSIS

#include <unistd.h> "int nice(int " inc );
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)): getcwd (): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION

nice () adds inc to the nice value for the calling process. (A higher nice value means a low priority.) Only the super%user may specify a negative increment, or priority increase. The range for nice values is described in getpriority(2).

RETURN VALUE

On success, the new nice value is returned (but see NOTES below). On error, -1 is returned, and errno is set appropriately.

ERRORS

EPERM

The calling process attempted to increase its priority by supplying a negative inc but has insufficient privileges. Under Linux the CAP_SYS_NICE capability is required. (But see the discussion of the RLIMIT_NICE resource limit in setrlimit(2).)

CONFORMING TO

SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. However, the Linux and (g)libc (earlier than glibc 2.2.4) return value is non-standard, see below. SVr4 documents an additional EINVAL error code.

NOTES

SUSv2 and POSIX.1-2001 specify that nice () should return the new nice value. However, the Linux syscall and the nice () library function provided in older versions of (g)libc (earlier than glibc 2.2.4) return 0 on success. The new nice value can be found using getpriority(2).

Since glibc 2.2.4, nice () is implemented as a library function that calls getpriority(2) to obtain the new nice value to be returned to the caller. With this implementation, a successful call 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(1p), fork(2), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), capabilities(7), renice (8)

COLOPHON

This page is part of release 2.79 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Possibly related

nice(1p), renice(1p), nice(3p), task_nice(9), raw nroff source of nice(2)