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Running jobs at low priority

A specific UNIX command that lets you run your background jobs (See section Running jobs in the background) at low priority is the nice command. It helps prevent compute-bound applications from slowing down interactive use of the computer. This includes your own interactive use in the foreground. nice accepts priority numbers from 1 to 20, where higher numbers mean lower priority. For example, to execute a program called number-cruncher at low priority in the background, you could type nice +20 number-cruncher &

Enter the nice command this way when you're in the C shell. When you're in the Bourne shell, enter it the same way except replace the plus (+) before the 20 with a minus (-). Note that there are 4 different forms of nice.

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