4.3BSD - /usr/man/cat3/nice.0

NICE(3C)                                                              NICE(3C)


NAME
       nice - set program priority

SYNOPSIS
       nice(incr)

DESCRIPTION
       This interface is obsoleted by setpriority(2).

       The  scheduling priority of the process is augmented by incr.  Positive
       priorities get less service than normal.  Priority 10 is recommended to
       users  who  wish to execute long-running programs without flak from the
       administration.

       Negative increments are ignored except on  behalf  of  the  super-user.
       The priority is limited to the range -20 (most urgent) to 20 (least).

       The priority of a process is passed to a child process by fork(2).  For
       a privileged process to return  to  normal  priority  from  an  unknown
       state,  nice  should be called successively with arguments -40 (goes to
       priority -20 because of truncation), 20 (to get to 0), then 0 (to main‐
       tain compatibility with previous versions of this call).

SEE ALSO
       nice(1), setpriority(2), fork(2), renice(8)


4th Berkeley Distribution         May 9, 1985                         NICE(3C)