NPROC(1)

📦
version 9.10 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

🌸 NPROC — okay bestie, let's count your CPUs 💅

No seriously, that's the whole manual name: nproc, and it prints the number of processing units available. It's the nproc(1) page from the User Commands section. That's it. That's the girl. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

nproc [OPTION]...

Just nproc and then whatever options you feel like. She's flexible like that. 🦋

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so here's the tea ☕: nproc prints the number of processing units available to the current process. Not the whole machine — to your process. Which means, lowkey, that number may be less than the number of online processors. It's giving "you don't get the whole cake, you get your slice." 🍰

And here's the plot twist that gets people every time: if the OMP_NUM_THREADS or OMP_THREAD_LIMIT environment variables are set, they will determine the minimum and maximum returned value respectively. So OMP_NUM_THREADS sets your floor, OMP_THREAD_LIMIT sets your ceiling. The env vars are literally the parents here, and they're setting a curfew. 🙈

Now the options, bestie, one by one, no skipping: ✨

  • --all — prints the number of installed processors, and it does it while disregarding any OpenMP environment variables, or CPU quotas. She said "I don't know her" to the limits. 🔥
  • --ignore=N — if possible, excludes N processing units. And the result is guaranteed to be at least 1, so she'll never hand you a zero, she's not gonna do you like that. 🫶
  • --help — displays this help and exits. Classic. 💖
  • --version — outputs version information and exits. Also classic. ✨

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Written by Giuseppe Scrivano. We stan. 👑

💌 REPORTING BUGS 💌

Found a bug? Don't be shy, tell the coreutils girlies:

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

And for the legal-lore girlies, because we keep every single receipt: 🧾

  • Packaged by Ubuntu (9.10-1ubuntu2)
  • Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  • License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
  • This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Not a vibe, but like, legally important. 💀

GNU coreutils 9.10, August 2026, and this whole page is NPROC(1) — mwah, that's the wrap, go count some CPUs bestie, ily, bye! 💖✨🦋💅

📦 where this page comes from