nice1
Execute a utility at an altered scheduling priority
Usage
nice [-n
increment]
utility
[argument ...]
Overview
The nice utility runs utility at an altered scheduling priority, by incrementing its “nice” value by the specified increment, or a default value of 10. The lower the nice value of a process, the higher its scheduling priority.
The superuser may specify a negative increment in order to run a utility with a higher scheduling priority.
Some shells may provide a builtin nice command which is similar or identical to this utility. Consult the builtin(1) manual page.
Environment
The PATH environment variable is used to locate the requested utility if the name contains no ‘/’ characters.
Exit status
If utility is invoked, the exit status of nice is the exit status of utility.
An exit status of 126 indicates utility was found, but could not be executed. An exit status of 127 indicates utility could not be found.
Examples
Execute utility ‘date’ at priority 5 assuming the priority of the shell is 0:
nice -n 5 date
Execute utility ‘date’ at priority -19 assuming the priority of the shell is 0 and you are the super-user:
nice -n 16 nice -n -35 date
Compatibility
The traditional -increment option has been deprecated but is still supported.
Releases
87 releases since FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE; the text changed 48 times.