Bug Report Nice Documentation by David MacKenzie

[Len Umina]

 Nicenesses  range
       from -20 (most favorable scheduling) to 19 (least favorable).


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This is very ambiguous since Niceness is a concept based on what the
user is trying to do and therefore has two potential, but reversed
scales for evaluation.

For example:

If you want a task to be low priority, is it more favorable to set -20
to get scheduling more favorable to other applications, making it
"Nicer"

If you want a task to be high priority, is it more favorable to set -20
to get higher priority scheduling so the task and user are treated
"Nicer" by the kernel?

You can't tell from the information in the documentation.

I would suggest the following change:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DESCRIPTION
        Tasks which are "nice" to other tasks run at lower priority.
They therefore have a higher value for "niceness".  (Max 19)
        The default value for "nice" is 10.  Only a Superuser can
decrease a tasks "niceness"  (Min -20) by setting it to a lower number,
        which will give that task a high priority.  The nice command
does not set the nice value directly, it increases it or lowers it by 
        the amount specified in the command.

-n, --adjustment=N
        add integer N to the default value of 10 for niceness when
executing the command

--help  display this help and exit

--version 
        output version information and execute

Examples:  nice -n 9 updatedb&                    Updates the filename
and location database at low priority (highest value of 19) 
                                                                   in
the background.  19 is formed by adding 9 to the default value of 10.

                  nice -n -30 updatedb&                 Updates the
filename and location dabase at high priority (lowest value, -20)
                                                                   in
the background.  -20 is formed by adding -30 to the default value of 10.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leonard J. Umina