Originální popis anglicky:
nice - invoke a utility with an altered nice value
Návod, kniha: POSIX Programmer's Manual
nice [-n increment] utility
[argument...]
The
nice utility shall invoke a utility, requesting that it be run with a
different nice value (see the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 3.239, Nice Value). With no
options and only if the user has appropriate privileges, the executed utility
shall be run with a nice value that is some implementation-defined quantity
less than or equal to the nice value of the current process. If the user lacks
appropriate privileges to affect the nice value in the requested manner, the
nice utility shall not affect the nice value; in this case, a warning
message may be written to standard error, but this shall not prevent the
invocation of
utility or affect the exit status.
The
nice utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following option is supported:
- -n increment
- A positive or negative decimal integer which shall have the
same effect on the execution of the utility as if the utility had called
the nice() function with the numeric value of the increment
option-argument.
The following operands shall be supported:
- utility
- The name of a utility that is to be invoked. If the
utility operand names any of the special built-in utilities in
Special Built-In Utilities , the results are undefined.
- argument
- Any string to be supplied as an argument when invoking the
utility named by the utility operand.
Not used.
None.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
nice:
- LANG
- Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization
Variables for the precedence of internationalization variables used to
determine the values of locale categories.)
- LC_ALL
- If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of
all the other internationalization variables.
- LC_CTYPE
- Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of
bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
multi-byte characters in arguments).
- LC_MESSAGES
- Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to standard error.
- NLSPATH
- Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES .
- PATH
- Determine the search path used to locate the utility to be
invoked. See the Base Definitions volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Chapter 8, Environment Variables.
Default.
Not used.
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
None.
None.
If
utility is invoked, the exit status of
nice shall be the exit
status of
utility; otherwise, the
nice utility shall exit with
one of the following values:
- 1-125
- An error occurred in the nice utility.
- 126
- The utility specified by utility was found but could
not be invoked.
- 127
- The utility specified by utility could not be found.
Default.
The following sections are informative.
The only guaranteed portable uses of this utility are:
- nice utility
-
Run utility with the default lower nice value.
- nice -n
<positive integer> utility
-
Run utility with a lower nice value.
On some implementations they have no discernible effect on the invoked utility
and on some others they are exactly equivalent.
Historical systems have frequently supported the <
positive
integer> up to 20. Since there is no error penalty associated with
guessing a number that is too high, users without access to the system
conformance document (to see what limits are actually in place) could use the
historical 1 to 20 range or attempt to use very large numbers if the job
should be truly low priority.
The nice value of a process can be displayed using the command:
The
command,
env,
nice,
nohup,
time, and
xargs utilities have been specified to use exit code 127 if an error
occurs so that applications can distinguish "failure to find a
utility" from "invoked utility exited with an error
indication". The value 127 was chosen because it is not commonly used for
other meanings; most utilities use small values for "normal error
conditions" and the values above 128 can be confused with termination due
to receipt of a signal. The value 126 was chosen in a similar manner to
indicate that the utility could be found, but not invoked. Some scripts
produce meaningful error messages differentiating the 126 and 127 cases. The
distinction between exit codes 126 and 127 is based on KornShell practice that
uses 127 when all attempts to
exec the utility fail with [ENOENT], and
uses 126 when any attempt to
exec the utility fails for any other
reason.
None.
Due to the text about the limits of the nice value being implementation-defined,
nice is not actually required to change the nice value of the executed
command; the limits could be zero differences from the system default,
although the implementor is required to document this fact in the conformance
document.
The 4.3 BSD version of
nice does not check whether
increment is a
valid decimal integer. The command
nice -x utility, for
example, would be treated the same as the command
nice --1
utility. If the user does not have appropriate privileges, this results
in a "permission denied" error. This is considered a bug.
When a user without appropriate privileges gives a negative
increment,
System V treats it like the command
nice -0 utility,
while 4.3 BSD writes a "permission denied" message and does not run
the utility. Neither was considered clearly superior, so the behavior was left
unspecified.
The C shell has a built-in version of
nice that has a different interface
from the one described in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.
The term "utility" is used, rather than "command", to
highlight the fact that shell compound commands, pipelines, and so on, cannot
be used. Special built-ins also cannot be used. However, "utility"
includes user application programs and shell scripts, not just utilities
defined in this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.
Historical implementations of
nice provide a nice value range of 40 or 41
discrete steps, with the default nice value being the midpoint of that range.
By default, they lower the nice value of the executed utility by 10.
Some historical documentation states that the
increment value must be
within a fixed range. This is misleading; the valid
increment values on
any invocation are determined by the current process nice value, which is not
always the default.
The definition of nice value is not intended to suggest that all processes in a
system have priorities that are comparable. Scheduling policy extensions such
as the realtime priorities in the System Interfaces volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 make the notion of a single underlying
priority for all scheduling policies problematic. Some implementations may
implement the
nice-related features to affect all processes on the
system, others to affect just the general time-sharing activities implied by
this volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, and others may have no
effect at all. Because of the use of "implementation-defined" in
nice and
renice, a wide range of implementation strategies are
possible.
None.
Shell Command Language ,
renice , the System Interfaces volume of
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001,
nice()
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE
Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable
Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue
6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original
IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The original
Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html
.
