Dr Andrew Scott G7VAV

MBCS, MIET, Member ACM, Member IEEE

Senior Lecturer
School of Computing
and Communications

D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom

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NL

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: September 2011
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

nl - number lines of files

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 separating logical pages
-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 at logical pages
-s, --number-separator=STRING: add STRING after (possible) line number
-v, --starting-line-number=NUMBER: first line number on each logical page
-w, --number-width=NUMBER: use NUMBER columns for line numbers
--help: display this help and exit
--version: output version information and exit

By default, selects -v1 -i1 -l1 -sTAB -w6 -nrn -hn -bt -fn. CC are two delimiter characters for separating logical pages, a missing second character implies :. Type \\ for \. 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

Report nl bugs to bug-coreutils@gnu.org
GNU coreutils home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
Report nl translation bugs to <http://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.shtml>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

for client (none)

http://www.andrew-scott.uk/

Andrew Scott

http://www.andrew-scott.co.uk/

NL