How can I open a file with line numbers displayed from the command line in 'vi'?

Solution 1:

You can use:

vi +"set number" your_file

Solution 2:

How about if you create a separate vim settings file for both cases? For example, ~/.vimrc-number and ~/.vimrc-nonumber. Then you can launch those like this:

vim -u ~/.vimrc-number /some/text/file
vim -u ~/.vimrc-nonumber /some/text/file

Or create aliases to your .bashrc:

alias vimnumbers="vim -u ~/.vimrc-number"
alias vimnonumbers="vim -u ~/.vimrc-nonumber"

Solution 3:

You can use:

vi +set\ number <filename>

or put "set number" to your ~/.vimrc


Solution 4:

If wrongly answered your question first. My answer was:

The exact syntax, to jump to a line is :

vi +linenumber filename 

or

vi filename +linenumber

Where linenumber is a number.

And the correct answer to your question is:

vi +set\ number <filename>

Which will provides lines number while editing filename.