February 16, 1998 NICE 3

### NAME

nice - set program scheduling priority

### LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

### SYNOPSIS

```int` nice(```int incr`)

### DESCRIPTION

This interface is obsoleted by setpriority(2).

The nice(``) function obtains the scheduling priority of the process from the system and sets it to the priority value specified in ```incr`. The priority is a value in the range -20 to 20. The default priority is 0; lower priorities cause more favorable scheduling. Only the super-user may lower priorities.

Children inherit the priority of their parent processes via fork(2).

### RETURN VALUES

Upon successful completion, nice(``) returns the new nice value minus ```NZERO`. Otherwise, -1 is returned, the process' nice value is not changed, and errno is set to indicate the error.

### ERRORS

The nice(``) function will fail if:

[```EPERM`]
  The ```incr` argument is negative and the caller is not the super-user.

### SEE ALSO

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

### STANDARDS

The nice(``) function conforms to X/Open Portability Guide Issue 4, Version 2 (``XPG4.2'') .

### HISTORY

A nice(``) syscall appeared in Version 6 `AT&T UNIX`.