nl - Man Page

number lines of files

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

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

Description

Write each FILE to standard output, with line numbers added.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-b,  --body-numbering=STYLE

use STYLE for numbering body lines

-d,  --section-delimiter=CC

use CC for logical page delimiters

-f,  --footer-numbering=STYLE

use STYLE for numbering footer lines

-h,  --header-numbering=STYLE

use STYLE for numbering header lines

-i,  --line-increment=NUMBER

line number increment at each line

-l,  --join-blank-lines=NUMBER

group of NUMBER empty lines counted as one

-n,  --number-format=FORMAT

insert line numbers according to FORMAT

-p,  --no-renumber

do not reset line numbers for each section

-s,  --number-separator=STRING

add STRING after (possible) line number

-v,  --starting-line-number=NUMBER

first line number for each section

-w,  --number-width=NUMBER

use NUMBER columns for line numbers

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

Default options are: -bt -d'\:' -fn -hn -i1 -l1 -n'rn' -s<TAB> -v1 -w6

CC are two delimiter characters used to construct logical page delimiters; a missing second character implies ':'.  As a GNU extension one can specify more than two characters, and also specifying the empty string (-d '') disables section matching.

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

Author

Written by Scott Bartram and David MacKenzie.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

See Also

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/nl>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) nl invocation'

Info

September 2024 GNU coreutils 9.5