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nl(1) General Commands Manual nl(1)

NAME

nl - Number lines of files

SYNOPSIS

nl [--help] [-b|--body-numbering] [-d|--section-delimiter] [-f|--footer-numbering] [-h|--header-numbering] [-i|--line-increment] [-l|--join-blank-lines] [-n|--number-format] [-p|--no-renumber] [-s|--number-separator] [-v|--starting-line-number] [-w|--number-width] [-V|--version] [file]

DESCRIPTION

Number lines of files

OPTIONS

Print help information.
use STYLE for numbering body lines
use CC for separating logical pages
use STYLE for numbering footer lines
use STYLE for numbering header lines
line number increment at each line
group of NUMBER empty lines counted as one
insert line numbers according to FORMAT

[possible values: ln, rn, rz]

do not reset line numbers at logical pages
add STRING after (possible) line number
first line number on each logical page
use NUMBER columns for line numbers
Print version

EXTRA

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

VERSION

v(uutils coreutils) 0.7.0

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 `regex` (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 <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.

nl (uutils coreutils) 0.7.0