Displaying line numbers under vi / vim can be very useful for debugging program errors and to improve overall readability of a program or scripts. Vim is very popular among software developers, system administrators and Linux/Unix/macOS users but lines are not displayed by default. In this tutorial, you will learn how to display or hide line numbers in Vim / Vi text editor running on Linux/Unix based systems.
Make the vi/vim text editor show or hide line numbers
Vim can display line numbers in the left margin:
- Press ESC key
- At the : prompt type the following command to run on line numbers: set number
- To turn off line numbering, type the following command at the : prompt set nonumber
Let us see all commands in detailed to display line number in vim.
Vi or Vim show line number command
To display line numbers along the left side of a window, type any one of the following command while using text editor. First press the Esc key. Press : and type any one of the following command at a : prompt:
Want to display relative line numbers in vim or vi? Try:
How to turn off line numbering in vim/vi
To turn off (or hide) line number again enter the same command at the : prompt:
To turn off relative line numbers, try:
How to enable line number setting permanently while using vim
If you need number every time you start vi/vim, append the following line to your
$ vi ~/.vimrc
Append the following line:
Save and close the file in vim.
How to open a file at particular location/line number
Jump to particular line number from a shell prompt, enter:
$ vi +linenumber file.c
$ vi +300 initlib.c
Jump to particular line that contains main() function from a shell prompt, enter:
$ vi +/searchTermHere file.c
$ vi +/main initlib.c
### note shell escape done with \ ###
$ vi +/addUser\( initlib.c
$ vi +/addUser\(arg1\) initlib.c
Minimal number of columns to use for the vim line number
Set following option:
The minimum value of N is 1, the maximum value N is 10. See this page for more info.
How do I list of all current vim settings?
At the : prompt, enter:
To see a list of everything that you have set so far in your vim config file or runtime, type the following command at the : prompt:
This page explained how to show or hide line numbers in vim / vi text editors using commands. For more info see the official vim website here and the following pages:
- Turn off color in Linux terminal/bash session
- Turn On or Off Color Syntax Highlighting In vi or vim Editor