| NICE(1) | General Commands Manual | NICE(1) | 
NAME
 nice — execute a utility with an altered scheduling priority
SYNOPSIS
| nice | [-n increment] utility [argument ...] | 
 
DESCRIPTION
 nice runs 
utility at an altered scheduling priority. If an 
increment is given, it is used; otherwise an increment of 10 is assumed. The super-user can run utilities with priorities higher than normal by using a negative 
increment. The priority can be adjusted over a range of -20 (the highest) to 20 (the lowest). A priority of 19 or 20 will prevent a process from taking any cycles from others at nice 0 or better.
Available options:
- 
-n increment
- 
A positive or negative decimal integer used to modify the system scheduling priority of utility.
 
EXIT STATUS
 The 
nice utility exits with one of the following values:
- 
1-125
- 
An error occurred in the nice utility.
- 
126
- 
The utility was found but could not be invoked.
- 
127
- 
The utility could not be found.
Otherwise, the exit status of nice will be that of utility.
 
COMPATIBILITY
 The historic -increment option has been deprecated but is still supported in this implementation.
STANDARDS
 The nice utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.2-1992 (“POSIX.2”).
HISTORY
 A nice utility appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
 nice is built into 
csh(1) with a slightly different syntax than described here. The form ‘
nice +10’ nices to positive nice, and ‘
nice -10’ can be used by the super-user to give a process more of the processor.