Vim/Vi is the text editor of choice for many software developers and Linux system administrators.

By default, Vim doesn’t show line numbers, but they can be easily turned on. Vim supports three modes of line numbering that helps you navigate through the files. In addition to the standard absolute line numbering, Vim also supports relative and hybrid line numbering modes.

In this guide, we will show you how to display or hide line numbers in Vim / Vi text editor.

Besides helping navigate the code, line numbering is also useful in other situations such as pair programming, debugging scripts, code reviews, referring to a specific line and more.

Absolute Line Numbers

The absolute line numbering is the standard line numbering, which displays the appropriate line number next to each line of text.

To activate the line numbering, set the number flag:

  1. Press the Esc key to switch to command mode.
  2. Press : (colon) and the cursor will move at the bottom left corner of the screen. Type set number or set nu and hit Enter.
  3. Line numbers will be displayed at the left side of the screen:

To disable the absolute line numbers off, run the :set nonumber or set nonu command:

You can also toggle the line numbers with :set number! or :set nu!:

Relative Line Numbers

When the relative line numbering is enabled, the current line is shown as 0, and the lines above and below from the current line are incrementally numbered (1, 2, 3… and so on).

Relative line mode is handy because many operations in Vim such as moving up/down and deleting lines work on relative line numbers.

For example, to delete the next ten lines below the cursor, you would use the d10j command. With relative line numbers enabled you’ll have a better visual overview on the code.

To enable the relative line numbering, switch to the command mode and enter :set relativenumber or :set rnu:

To disable the relative line numbers, type :set norelativenumber or set nornu:

To toggle the relative line numbers use the :set relativenumber! or :set rnu! command:

Hybrid Line Numbers

In Vim 7.4 and later, enabling both the absolute and relative line numbers at the same time sets up the hybrid line number mode.

Hybrid line numbering is the same as the relative line numbering with the only difference being that the current line instead of showing 0 shows its absolute line number.

To turn on the hybrid line numbering, run both the number and relativenumber commands:

:set number relativenumber

The same can be achieved by running the commands one by one:

:set number 
:set relativenumber

To disable the hybrid mode, you’ll need to turn off both the absolute and relative numbering.

Permanent Settings

If you want line numbers to appear each time you launch Vim, add the appropriate command to your .vimrc (Vim configuration file). For example, to enable absolute line numbering, you would add the following:

vim ~/.vimrc

~/.vimrc

Conclusion

To show line numbers in Vim use the :set number command for absolute line numbers, :set relativenumber for relative line numbers. If both absolute and relative line numbers are enabled Vim switches to the hybrid line numbering mode.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions.

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