If you use vi, a simple ":set nu" will also provide line numbers. How many
other (simple) ways are there to number lines in a file? You'd think UNIX
tool designers were BASIC programmers :-). BASIC...
10 print "hello world"
20 goto 10
Those were simpler times.
But I digress. Getting back to the topic. Why do we need a "cat -n" and an
"nl"? Feature bloat seems to creep into even simple UNIX utilities.
And here are a couple of more goods ways of finding a line number using
sed or grep and a pattern:
sed -n /"easily"/'{=;p;}' < data_analysis.txt
34
I could easily implement netblock blocking in using an
grep -n "easily" data_analysis.txt
34: I could easily implement netblock blocking using an
Or use grep to label all the lines with numbers:
grep -n "^.*$" data_analysis.txt
We're lucky to have so many tools in the toolbox.
When I was learning linux more than 20 years ago Eric Harrison explained it
to me: "Linux is easy because it has very simple tools, each doing only one
thing well. However, there are thousands of little tools."
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