On 03/24/2018 10:09 PM, Paul Eggert wrote: > L A Walsh wrote: >> how do you tell if the resetting of the >> priority worked or failed? > > I guess you're supposed to look at stderr, which is what you did. > > This is the way 'nice' has behaved for quite some time, and it's what POSIX > specifies. We'd need a real good reason to change it, given that changing it > would no doubt break stuff.
Anyway, it wouldn't harm to document this behavior in the Texinfo manual... the sentence from the POSIX spec sounds quote good: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/nice.html 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. Have a nice day, Berny
