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NL

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: September 2017
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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 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

By default, selects -v1 -i1 -l1 -sTAB -w6 -nrn -hn -bt -fn. CC are two delimiter characters used to construct logical page delimiters, 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

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

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.