NICE(2) Linux Programmers Manual NICE(2)
NAME
nice - change process priority
SYNOPSIS
#include
int nice(int inc);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
nice(): _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 non-standard, 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)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.05 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/.
Linux 2007-07-26 NICE(2)
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