Going to a specific line number using Less in Unix

Question

I have a file that has around million lines. I need to go to line number 320123 to check the data. How do I do that?

Mare

What about doing that with more? :-) – Crispi

because: less is more, but more more than more is, so more is less less, so use more less if you want less more. – Janettjanetta

Answer 1

With n being the line number:

• ng: Jump to line number n. Default is the start of the file.
• nG: Jump to line number n. Default is the end of the file.

So to go to line number 320123, you would type 320123g.

Copy-pasted straight from Wikipedia.

Brigham

... and don't hit enter after g, or you will jump one further line. – Janettjanetta

This nor the other answers work for the BusyBox version of less: less 9581553g -N file.txt less: can't open '9581553g': No such file or directory and also: less +G -N file.txt less: can't open '+G': No such file or directory – Beem

@Beem you should enter these commands being in less not in shell. First you open the file less file.txt and then enter your command 9581553g – Hallucination

That makes so much more sense. I was treating it like sed or awk where you could give specific line numbers as parameters. Thank you for clarifying. – Beem

if its a large file, it may take some time to seek to the position....be patient – Conventionalize

Answer 2

To open at a specific line straight from the command line, use:

less +320123 filename

If you want to see the line numbers too:

less +320123 -N filename

You can also choose to display a specific line of the file at a specific line of the terminal, for when you need a few lines of context. For example, this will open the file with line 320123 on the 10th line of the terminal:

less +320123 -j 10 filename

Permenter

Answer 3

You can use sed for this too -

sed -n '320123'p filename 

This will print line number 320123.

If you want a range then you can do -

sed -n '320123,320150'p filename 

If you want from a particular line to the very end then -

sed -n '320123,$'p filename 

Cool

Answer 4

From within less (in Linux):

 g and the line number to go forward

 G and the line number to go backwards

Used alone, g and G will take you to the first and last line in a file respectively; used with a number they are both equivalent.

An example; you want to go to line 320123 of a file,

press 'g' and after the colon type in the number 320123

Additionally you can type '-N' inside less to activate / deactivate the line numbers. You can as a matter of fact pass any command line switches from inside the program, such as -j or -N.

NOTE: You can provide the line number in the command line to start less (less +number -N) which will be much faster than doing it from inside the program:

less +12345 -N /var/log/hugelogfile

This will open a file displaying the line numbers and starting at line 12345

Source: man 1 less and built-in help in less (less 418)

Jackanapes

interestingly, google decided to take parts of your answer for their displayed answer when googling: "less go to line" (a good answer imo) – Excursus

Answer 5

For editing this is possible in nano via +n from command line, e.g.,

nano +16 file.txt

To open file.txt to line 16.

Lurlinelusa

adding -c to the nano command is also useful - doing so will cause nano to always show the current line number while editing – Conventionalize

Answer 6

Just to add my 2 cents, in long files it is quicker to move to a given percentage, e.g typing 40% moves to the 40-th percentile of the length.

Patroon