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NAME
       nice - change process priority


SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int nice(int inc);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       nice(): _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE


DESCRIPTION
       nice()  adds  inc to the nice value for the calling process.  (A higher nice value means a low priority.)
       Only the superuser may specify a negative increment, or priority increase.  The range for nice values  is
       described in getpriority(2).


RETURN VALUE
       On success, the new nice value is returned (but see NOTES below).  On error, -1 is returned, and errno is
       set appropriately.


ERRORS
       EPERM  The  calling  process  attempted  to  increase  its  priority  by supplying a negative inc but has
              insufficient privileges.  Under Linux, the CAP_SYS_NICE capability  is  required.   (But  see  the
              discussion of the RLIMIT_NICE resource limit in setrlimit(2).)


CONFORMING TO
       POSIX.1-2001,  POSIX.1-2008,  SVr4,  4.3BSD.   However,  the Linux and (g)libc (earlier than glibc 2.2.4)
       return value is nonstandard, see below.  SVr4 documents an additional EINVAL error code.


NOTES
       SUSv2 and POSIX.1 specify that nice() should return the new nice value.  However, the Linux  system  call
       and the nice() library function provided in older versions of (g)libc (earlier than glibc 2.2.4) return 0
       on success.  The new nice value can be found using getpriority(2).

       Since  glibc  2.2.4,  nice() is implemented as a library function that calls getpriority(2) to obtain the
       new nice value to  be  returned  to  the  caller.   With  this  implementation,  a  successful  call  can
       legitimately return -1.  To reliably detect an error, set errno to 0 before the call, and check its value
       when nice() returns -1.


SEE ALSO
       nice(1), renice(1), fork(2), getpriority(2), setpriority(2), capabilities(7), sched(7)


COLOPHON
       This  page  is  part  of  release  4.04  of  the  Linux man-pages project.  A description of the project,
       information  about  reporting  bugs,  and  the  latest  version  of  this   page,   can   be   found   at
       http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Linux                                              2015-08-08                                            NICE(2)