On Unix-like operating systems, the nl command numbers the lines in a file.

This page describes the GNU/Linux version of nl.

Syntax

nl [OPTION]… [FILE]…

Options

By default, nl selects -v1 -i1 -l1 -sTAB -w6 -nrn -hn -bt -fn. CC are two delimiter characters for separating logical pages. A missing second character implies a colon (:).

  • Syntax
  • Examples
  • Related commands
  • Linux commands help

For a backslash (), two backslashes (\).

STYLE is one of:

FORMAT is one of:

Examples

cat list.txt

apples oranges potatoes lemons garlic

nl list.txt

 1	apples
 2	oranges
 3	potatoes
 4	lemons
 5	garlic

In the example above, we use the cat command to display the contents of list.txt. Then we use nl to number each line and display the result to standard output.

nl list.txt > nlist.txt

cat nlist.txt

In the example above, we run the same nl command, but redirect the output to a new file, nlist.txt. Then we use cat to display the results.

wc — Display a count of lines, words, and characters in a file.