[comp.sys.sgi] Problems with nice -> should be: Problems with nice man-page.

XBR2D96D@DDATHD21.BITNET (Knobi der Rechnerschrat) (08/08/90)

Hello,

  the problem with nice seems to be more a problem with the nice man
page. There it is silently assumed that you are using /bin/sh as your
shell. If you use /bin/csh (or derivates like tcsh) things are different.

 Here are the rules that I have discovered by experiment:

   shell   def-value   decrease priority  increase priority (as root)
   ------------------------------------------------------------------
   sh         10       nice -value          nice --value
   csh         4       nice +value          nice  -value

 The '-', '--' and '+' are IMPORTANT. Could somebody at SGI look at
the man page and correct it for some future release?


Regards
Martin Knoblauch

TH-Darmstadt
Physical Chemistry 1
Petersenstrasse 20
D-6100 Darmstadt, FRG

BITNET: <XBR2D96D@DDATHD21>

davea@quasar.wpd.sgi.com (David B. Anderson) (08/08/90)

In article <9008080211.aa02949@VGR.BRL.MIL>, XBR2D96D@DDATHD21.BITNET (Knobi der Rechnerschrat) writes:
> Hello,
> 
>   the problem with nice seems to be more a problem with the nice man
> page. There it is silently assumed that you are using /bin/sh as your
> shell. If you use /bin/csh (or derivates like tcsh) things are different.
> 
>  Here are the rules that I have discovered by experiment:
> 
>    shell   def-value   decrease priority  increase priority (as root)
>    ------------------------------------------------------------------
>    sh         10       nice -value          nice --value
>    csh         4       nice +value          nice  -value
> 
>  The '-', '--' and '+' are IMPORTANT. Could somebody at SGI look at
> the man page and correct it for some future release?

Martin Knoblauch has an interesting table here.

``nice'' is a csh built-in and the csh(1) man page accurately gives its
properties.  The csh built-in nice calls setpriority(2) to set the priority
of the victim process.

It might be a nice :-) idea to have the nice(1) man page mention that
csh uses a built-in......

Regards,
[ David B. Anderson  Silicon Graphics  (415)335-1548  davea@sgi.com ]
[``What can go wrong?''                          --Calvin and Hobbes]