Execute and renice a process in one command

Question

Does anyone know if it's possible to execute and renice a process in one command, i.e. without having to look up the command in the list of processes using the ps command and then renice that particular pid.

Answer 1

As I mentioned, @glenn-jackman gave you the answer. But just to elaborate a bit more, if you wish to give higher priority to the command but do not intend to run it as root, you could use a function (and sudo):

nice_cmd() {
  PRIORITY=$1 ; shift
  CMD=$1 ; shift
  ${CMD} $@ & cmdpid=$!
  sudo renice -n ${PRIORITY} -p ${cmdpid}
}

Then execute it as (this could ask for your user password, depending on how is sudo configured)

$ nice_cmd -5 vim somefile
$ fg

And from a top on another terminal, you can double check the nice value.

Answer 2

Just use nice (instead of renice). For example:

nice -n 10 command

This will run command with a low priority.