Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Man page of NL

NL

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: June 2025
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 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

Default options are: -bt -d'\:' -fn -hn -i1 -l1 -n'rn' -s<TAB> -v1 -w6

CC are two delimiter characters used to construct logical page delimiters; a missing second character implies ':'. As a GNU extension one can specify more than two characters, and also specifying the empty string (-d '') disables section matching.

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: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>  

SEE ALSO

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/nl>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) nl invocation'


Packaged by Debian (9.7-3)
Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://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.

 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
AUTHOR
REPORTING BUGS
SEE ALSO
This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 11:48:42 GMT, September 14, 2026