nl (Unix)

nl is a Unix utility for numbering lines, either from a file or from standard input, reproducing output on standard output.

It has a number of switches:

a - number all lines
t - number lines with printable text only
n - no line numbering
string - number only those lines containing the regular expression defined in the string supplied.

The default applied switch is t.

nl also supports a number of command line options.

Example

 $ nl tf
     1  echo press cr
     2  read cr
     3  done

The following example numbers only the lines that begin with a capital letter A (matching on the regular expression /^A/). filename is optional.

$ nl -b p^A filename
       apple
    1  Apple
       BANANA
    2  Allspice
       strawberry

It can be useful as an alternative to grep -n:

$ cat somefile
aaaa
bbbb
cccc
dddc
$ nl somefile | grep cccc
    3 cccc

External links

The program's manpage

Unix command-line interface programs and shell builtins

File system	cat chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fsck fuser ln ls mkdir mount mv pax pwd rm rmdir size split tee touch type umask

Processes	at bg chroot cron fg kill killall nice pgrep pkill ps pstree time top

User environment	clear env exit finger history id logname mesg passwd su sudo uptime talk tput uname w wall who whoami write

Text processing	awk banner basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fmt fold head iconv join less more nl paste printf sed sort spell strings tail tr uniq vi wc xargs yes

Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait

Networking	dig host ifconfig inetd netcat netstat nslookup ping rdate rlogin route ssh traceroute

Searching	find grep locate whatis whereis

Documentation	apropos help man

Miscellaneous	bc dc cal expr lp od sleep true and false

List of Unix utilities

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nl (Unix)

Example

See also

External links