110

I'm struggling to figure out a way to do this...I'm using less to view a large (~1GB) file. I want to jump to line "$n" in the file - preferably without having to wait for lines 1-($n-1) to scroll by in my terminal.

I would do this in vim using something like this:

localhost:~# vim myfile +$n

Is there an equivalent command line option? If not, is there a way to do this once the file is open in less?

Journeyman Geek
  • 129,178
AJ.
  • 4,031
  • 4
    A question that bothered me again and again, when i didn't have the time to search for an answer. Typing 'h' might have helped, for it displays the "SUMMARY OF LESS COMMANDS"... – lajuette Mar 14 '11 at 16:29

1 Answers1

170

If the file is open you can type:

  • 100g to go to the 100th line.

  • 50p to go to 50% into the file.

  • 100P to go to the line containing 100th byte.

You can use these from terminal by adding + in front of them:

less +100g bigfile.txt
Egon
  • 2,913
  • 11
    And don't forget, you can type $ to go to the last line. – rob Feb 24 '10 at 20:21
  • Note that without any suffix it goes to the Nth line less +100 bigfile.txt – CharlesB Apr 23 '21 at 08:53
  • can also use 50% to jump to 50%. More typing but easier to remember, and that also works in vim – wisbucky Feb 15 '22 at 04:32
  • Thanks, I knew about less +G ... to go to the end of the file. but not the less +nnng .... I have always resorted to using less, but felt concerned sometimes in case I made inadvertent alterations (especially as occasionally these might be production files!) – Bill Naylor Oct 21 '23 at 17:44