Re: How to insert increasing numbers in each line of a file

[Gerald Lai]

On Sat, 20 May 2006, Tim Chase wrote:

I don't really know how to do this but im sure that there's a
solution. I have some file and i need to insert a number
before each line and a separator. The number is the line
number. Is there any way in vim to do this easily?

Well, the canonical way to do this on *nix boxes is just

        cat -n file.in > file.out

which can be used in vim with

        :%!cat -n

[snip]

I see that Tim and Tony have both mentioned most of the ways of
inserting a number before each line. One more alternative: if you are on
a *nix box, the premier tool for doing this job is "nl". Check out 'man
nl'.

It lets you set the start number, increment amount, separator string,
number column width, empty-line skip, left/right justification with
optional leading zeros.

For example,

  :%!nl -s"  " -w4 -v7 -i2 -nln -ba

This will use

  a 2-space separator
  column width of 4
  start with number 7
  increment by 2
  left justified
  for all lines (don't skip empty lines)

HTH :)
--
Gerald