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nice (2)
NICE(2) Linux Programmer's Manual NICE(2)
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 superuser 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 sup-
plying 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 nonstandard, see below. SVr4 docu-
ments 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 pro-
vided 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(1), fork(2), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), capabilities(7),
renice(8)
Linux 2007-07-26 NICE(2)
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