My file,
PSS-A (Primary A)
PSS-B (Primary B)
PSS-C (Primary C)
PSS-D (Primary D)
PSS-E (Primary E)
PSS-F (Primary F)
PSS-G (Primary G)
PSS-H (Primary H)
PSS-I (Primary I)
SPARE (SPARE)
Output file,
1> PSS-A (Primary A)
2> PSS-B (Primary B)
3> PSS-C (Primary C)
4> PSS-D (Primary D)
5> PSS-E (Primary E)
6> PSS-F (Primary F)
7> PSS-G (Primary G)
8> PSS-H (Primary H)
9> PSS-I (Primary I)
10> SPARE (SPARE)
The right tool for this job is nl:
nl -w2 -s'> ' file
You may want to tune width option according to the total number of lines in the file (if you want numbers to be aligned nicely).
Output:
1> PSS-A (Primary A)
2> PSS-B (Primary B)
3> PSS-C (Primary C)
4> PSS-D (Primary D)
5> PSS-E (Primary E)
6> PSS-F (Primary F)
7> PSS-G (Primary G)
8> PSS-H (Primary H)
9> PSS-I (Primary I)
10> SPARE (SPARE)
If you want the same format that you have specified
awk '{print NR "> " $s}' inputfile > outputfile
otherwise, though not standard, most implementations of the cat command can print line numbers for you (numbers padded to width 6 and followed by TAB in at least the GNU, busybox, Solaris and FreeBSD implementations).
cat -n inputfile > outputfile
Or you can use grep -n (numbers followed by :) with a regexp like ^ that matches any line:
grep -n '^' inputfile > outputfile
cat command its printing the line numbers... but not exactly what I wanted.... but awk '{print NR "> " $s}' inputfile > outputfile gives me the desired output.... :-) @amit kumar
– Nainita
Aug 10 '15 at 15:29
cat -n is not portable. Only the -u option is specified in POSIX cat.
– vinc17
Oct 08 '18 at 10:43
cat -n works on MacOS 13.x, good enough for quick in-terminal file analysis.
– jakub.g
Nov 27 '23 at 11:19
In Linux/Unix, there are almost always multiple ways to do common tasks. Just for completeness, here are some other ways you can do it besides the obvious:
pr -t -n [file]
From an old command to format text to send to a line printer. The '-t' will omit header and footer information that are not relevant to a terminal.
Here's a cute sed method that prints the line number on every other line. We use 'paste' to fold them into a single line:
sed = /etc/passwd | paste - -
Or, we can use the one true editor, ed:
echo '1,$n' | ed -s [file]
Or, ex, vi's non-cursor-addressing predecessor:
printf 'set number\ng/^/p\n' | ex /etc/passwd
And one final complicated answer, requiring ksh93 or bash (and the seq command. Using the .. range and an eval statement is left as an exercise):
paste <(seq $(wc -l < [file])) [file]
Tested on Debian Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris 10 (the last fails there because of no 'seq').
i have done by below method
command: cat -n filename |sed -r "s/^\s+//g"| sed "s/^[0-9]*/&\> /g"
output
cat -n u.txt |sed -r "s/^\s+//g"| sed "s/^[0-9]*/&\> /g"
1> PSS-A (Primary A)
2> PSS-B (Primary B)
3> PSS-C (Primary C)
4> PSS-D (Primary D)
5> PSS-E (Primary E)
6> PSS-F (Primary F)
7> PSS-G (Primary G)
8> PSS-H (Primary H)
9> PSS-I (Primary I)
10> SPARE (SPARE)
nltreats lines that contain a sequence of 1, 2 or 3\:strings specially. Use-d $'\n'to avoid that. Also, by default, it doesn't number empty lines. Use-bato number every line. – Stéphane Chazelas Jan 30 '18 at 15:57$'...'syntax is bash-specific. – myrdd Nov 06 '18 at 16:17seqdidn't do it. Thank god fornl– Sridhar Sarnobat Jan 09 '19 at 17:56$'...'comes from ksh93 and is also supported byzsh,mksh, busybox sh, FreeBSD sh and bash at least. It's not standard yet, but is planned for inclusion in the next major POSIX version. – Stéphane Chazelas Feb 19 '19 at 10:08$'...'(ANSI-C Quoting) portability: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/371827/do-shells-other-than-bash-and-zsh-support-ansi-c-quoting-e-g-string – myrdd Feb 19 '19 at 16:20nlcan set a starting number with-v. – Onnonymous Jun 12 '19 at 07:00