Going to a specific line number using Less in Unix Going to a specific line number using Less in Unix unix unix

Going to a specific line number using Less in Unix


With n being the line number:

  • ng: Jump to line number n. Default is the start of the file.
  • nG: Jump to line number n. Default is the end of the file.

So to go to line number 320123, you would type 320123g.

Copy-pasted straight from Wikipedia.


To open at a specific line straight from the command line, use:

less +320123 filename

If you want to see the line numbers too:

less +320123 -N filename

You can also choose to display a specific line of the file at a specific line of the terminal, for when you need a few lines of context. For example, this will open the file with line 320123 on the 10th line of the terminal:

less +320123 -j 10 filename


You can use sed for this too -

sed -n '320123'p filename 

This will print line number 320123.

If you want a range then you can do -

sed -n '320123,320150'p filename 

If you want from a particular line to the very end then -

sed -n '320123,$'p filename