nl
Purpose
Add line numbers to nonblank lines of text in a file and write to standard output.
Syntax
nl [options] [ file ]
Options
-ba numbers all lines.-bt numbers text lines only (the default).-s c separates text from line numbers with the character c (the default is tab).-w n uses n columns to show the line numbers.
Description
The nl command adds a line number to each nonblank line of text from a file and writes the lines to standard output. Suppose the file sample.txt has the following lines:A line followed by a blank line and then another non-blank line.
The nl command applied to this file produces the following result:
nl sample.txt
1 A line followed by a blank line and
2 then another non-blank line.