How to display line numbers in 'less' (GNU) How to display line numbers in 'less' (GNU) unix unix

How to display line numbers in 'less' (GNU)


unix gnu

From the manual:

-N or --LINE-NUMBERS Causes a line number to be displayed at the beginning of each line in the display.

You can also toggle line numbers without quitting less by typing -N.

It is possible to toggle any of less's command line options in this way.

unix gnu

You can also press = while less is open to just display (at the bottom of the screen) information about the current screen, including line numbers, with format:

myfile.txt lines 20530-20585/1816468 byte 1098945/116097872 1%  (press RETURN)

So here for example, the screen was currently showing lines 20530-20585, and the files has a total of 1816468 lines.

unix gnu

You could filter the file through cat -n before piping to less:

cat -n file.txt | less

Or, if your version of less supports it, the -N option:

less -N file.txt

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