I know how to display line numbers (and columns) in the mode-line, but I'd like emacs to display the line numbers for all the lines on the left-hand side. I've seen this done in vim and other text editors. How do I do this for emacs?
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Meta discussion about the tagging of this question – Gilles♦ Sep 27 '14 at 0:45
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As @eric-brown mentioned you can use M-x linum-mode.
Another good idea is to use (add-hook 'prog-mode-hook 'linum-mode) in your init.el to automatically enable linum-mode in all programming modes.
For Emacs version >= 26 you can use display-line-numbers-mode or global-display-line-numbers-mode.
See EmacsWiki
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This answer is outdated, see answer using
display-line-numbers-mode. – ideasman42 Oct 26 '18 at 5:14 -
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M-x linum-mode will do the trick. If you wish to effect this for all buffers, then M-x global-linum-mode will do this.
answered Sep 25 '14 at 21:45
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1(per the suggestion of nispio and mgoszcz2) addition of
(global-linum-mode)to your .emacs.d/init.el file will make it permanent. I find global-linum-mode to be a bit excessive, and mgoszcz2's suggestion for enabling it only in certain modes is a good one. – Eric Brown Sep 25 '14 at 22:24
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If you are using Emacs 26 or newer, you can use display-line-numbers-mode.
from etc/NEWS.26:
** Emacs now supports optional display of line numbers in the buffer. This is similar to what 'linum-mode' provides, but much faster and doesn't usurp the display margin for the line numbers. Customize the buffer-local variable 'display-line-numbers' to activate this optional display. Alternatively, you can use the 'display-line-numbers-mode' minor mode or the global 'global-display-line-numbers-mode'. When using these modes, customize 'display-line-numbers-type' with the same value as you would use with 'display-line-numbers'.
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nlinum-mode is another option. It has the same interface as linum-mode, so you can use the same hooks, but it uses a different technology to be more performant. Quote from nlinum.el:
;; This is like linum-mode, but uses jit-lock to be (hopefully) more efficient.
You can install it via GNU Elpa via the usual list-packages.
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Certainly linum-mode is a good choice.
If you don't always want to see line numbers, like me, you can use this trick from the excellent What the .emacs.d!? blog.
This temporarily enables linum-mode when you run goto-line.
Here's the code from his blog:
(global-set-key [remap goto-line] 'goto-line-with-feedback)
(defun goto-line-with-feedback () "Show line numbers temporarily, while prompting for the line number input" (interactive) (unwind-protect
(progn
(linum-mode 1)
(goto-line (read-number "Goto line: ")))
(linum-mode -1)))
