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From: jim@segue.segue.com (Jim Balter)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: How to add line numbers to a text file?
Message-ID: <4905@segue.segue.com>
Date: 1 Dec 90 15:51:57 GMT
References: <6826@uceng.UC.EDU> <15248:Nov3018:01:4490@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: jim@segue.segue.com (Jim Balter)
Organization: Segue Software, Inc. - Santa Monica, CA. +1-213-453-2161
Lines: 12

In article <6826@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) writes:
> My question to all of you, however, is this: faced with the need to
> number a text file from a shell script, how would you do it? I'm
> kind of curious to see the variety of approaches possible. Would you
> use C, awk, perl, sed, sh, cat, echo, expr, and/or dd?

pr -tn filename
grep -n $ filename

If you simply RTFM (permuted index), you'll find
nl filename on PWB/SVID based systems, and
num filename (cat -n) on BSD