This is part of a series of tips on using Vi. To see the complete series, click here.
Sometimes when I open up a file in vi, I want to go to a specific line. Perhaps I had a compile error on a certain line, and I want to take a look at that line. It’s nice and easy to do: when in command mode, just type the line number, followed by an uppercase G. So, for example, if I type:
35G
I’ll be taken to line 35.
Actually, in the situation I mentioned, there’s an even better way to do it — when I open the file, I can specify what line to go to with the +linenumber option on the command line. For example, to open a file called dummy.txt and go directly to line 35, I can type:
vi +35 dummy.txt
and the cursor will be placed on line 35.
There are a couple variants that I use frequently: if I want to go to the first line, I enter:
1G
and if I want to go to the very last line of the file, I don’t put a number first, just the uppercase G
G
takes me to the last line.