Less: Quickly Jump to Line Number in Large File

Question

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?

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

Egon · Accepted Answer · 2010-02-24T20:14:59.497

166

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

edited Feb 24 '10 at 20:14

answered Feb 24 '10 at 20:07

Egon

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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

Less: Quickly Jump to Line Number in Large File

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