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@(#)nice.1 8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
$FreeBSD: releng/11.0/usr.bin/nice/nice.1 219050 2011-02-26 11:20:51Z remko $
.Dd February 24, 2011 .Dt NICE 1 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm nice .Nd execute a utility at an altered scheduling priority .Sh SYNOPSIS .Nm .Op Fl n Ar increment .Ar utility .Op Ar argument ... .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm utility runs .Ar utility at an altered scheduling priority, by incrementing its .Dq nice value by the specified .Ar increment , or a default value of 10. The lower the nice value of a process, the higher its scheduling priority.
p The superuser may specify a negative increment in order to run a utility with a higher scheduling priority.
p Some shells may provide a builtin .Nm command which is similar or identical to this utility. Consult the .Xr builtin 1 manual page. .Sh ENVIRONMENT The .Ev PATH environment variable is used to locate the requested .Ar utility if the name contains no .Ql / characters. .Sh EXIT STATUS If .Ar utility is invoked, the exit status of .Nm is the exit status of .Ar utility .
p An exit status of 126 indicates .Ar utility was found, but could not be executed. An exit status of 127 indicates .Ar utility could not be found. .Sh EXAMPLES Execute utility .Sq date at priority 5 assuming the priority of the shell is 0:
p .Dl "nice -n 5 date"
p Execute utility .Sq date at priority -19 assuming the priority of the shell is 0 and you are the super-user:
p .Dl "nice -n 16 nice -n -35 date" .Sh COMPATIBILITY The traditional .Fl Ns Ar increment option has been deprecated but is still supported. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr builtin 1 , .Xr csh 1 , .Xr idprio 1 , .Xr rtprio 1 , .Xr getpriority 2 , .Xr setpriority 2 , .Xr renice 8 .Sh STANDARDS The .Nm utility conforms to .St -p1003.1-2001 . .Sh HISTORY A .Nm utility appeared in .At v4 .