nl

nl [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Number lines of files

Options

--help

Print help information.

--body-numbering=<STYLE>, -b <STYLE>

use STYLE for numbering body lines

--section-delimiter=<CC>, -d <CC>

use CC for separating logical pages

--footer-numbering=<STYLE>, -f <STYLE>

use STYLE for numbering footer lines

--header-numbering=<STYLE>, -h <STYLE>

use STYLE for numbering header lines

--line-increment=<NUMBER>, -i <NUMBER>

line number increment at each line

--join-blank-lines=<NUMBER>, -l <NUMBER>

group of NUMBER empty lines counted as one

--number-format=<FORMAT>, -n <FORMAT>

insert line numbers according to FORMAT

--no-renumber, -p

do not reset line numbers at logical pages

--number-separator=<STRING>, -s <STRING>

add STRING after (possible) line number

--starting-line-number=<NUMBER>, -v <NUMBER>

first line number on each logical page

--number-width=<NUMBER>, -w <NUMBER>

use NUMBER columns for line numbers

STYLE is one of:

• a number all lines
• t number only nonempty lines
• n number no lines
• pBRE number only lines that contain a match for the basic regular expression, BRE

FORMAT is one of:

• ln left justified, no leading zeros
• rn right justified, no leading zeros
• rz right justified, leading zeros

Examples

Number non-blank lines in a file:

nl {{path/to/file}}

Read from stdin:

{{command}} | nl -

Number [a]ll [b]ody lines including blank lines or do [n]ot number [b]ody lines:

nl -b {{a|n}} {{path/to/file}}

Number only the [b]ody lines that match a basic regular expression (BRE) [p]attern:

nl -b p'FooBar[0-9]' {{path/to/file}}

Use a specific [i]ncrement for line numbering:

nl -i {{increment}} {{path/to/file}}

Specify the line numbering format to [r]ight or [l]eft justified, keeping leading [z]eros or [n]ot:

nl -n {{rz|ln|rn}}

Specify the line numbering's [w]idth (6 by default):

nl -w {{col_width}} {{path/to/file}}

Use a specific string to [s]eparate the line numbers from the lines (TAB by default):

nl -s {{separator}} {{path/to/file}}

The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.

Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.