From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 20:50:51 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: (nice invocation): Document "niceness" versus
X-Git-Tag: CPPI-1_12~33
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=263672792f546ea88f0fe744bdbf75aec5280175;p=thirdparty%2Fcoreutils.git

(nice invocation): Document "niceness" versus
"nice value" versus "scheduling priority".
---

diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi
index 32b6977a6d..17d6e2887a 100644
--- a/doc/coreutils.texi
+++ b/doc/coreutils.texi
@@ -12517,6 +12517,16 @@ enforce more restrictive limits.  An attempt to set the niceness
 outside the supported range is treated as an attempt to use the
 minimum or maximum supported value.
 
+A niceness should not be confused with a scheduling priority, which
+lets applications determine the order in which threads are scheduled
+to run.  Unlike a priority, a niceness is merely advice to the
+scheduler, which the scheduler is free to ignore.  Also, as a point of
+terminology, @acronym{POSIX} defines the behavior of @command{nice} in
+terms of a @dfn{nice value}, which is the nonnegative difference
+between a niceness and the minimum niceness.  Though @command{nice}
+conforms to @command{POSIX}, its documentation and diagnostics use the
+term ``niceness'' for compatibility with historical practice.
+
 @var{command} must not be a special built-in utility (@pxref{Special
 built-in utilities}).