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
>
Thank you all for your tips. I'm working under Windows at moment but i
got the Cygwin environment running here too. So i think, the methods
with cat or nl should also be possible ;)
