How to enumerate a list of files

Question

I want to get a numbered list of files, e.g. if I have these files:

a.pdf
b.pdf
c

then it should be listed as:

1 a.pdf
2 b.pdf
3 c

Answer 1

You can do it two ways:-
1st one :-
ls -1 | awk '{print NR,$0}'

2nd one:-
ls -1 | cat -n
You must prefer 2nd one but choose whatever you like. :-)

Answer 2

If you want to avoid parsing the output of ls (which you do), you can do something like this:

$ counter=1; for f in *; do printf "%2d %s\n" $((counter++)) "$f"; done
 1 a.pdf
 2 b.pdf
 3 c

I only mention this because it's the path for doing more sophisticated things, not just enumerating.

Answer 3

If your system has command nl, it will be easier. ( I can confirm nl command is exist in cygwin, aix and solaris system, then it should be popular command in most unix system)

ls |nl

Answer 4

You can do this without awk, trivially. ls -1 | cat -n.

Or, with awk:

ls -1 | awk '{printf "%d %s\n", NR, $0;}'

Answer 5

Not sure why you need to use awk but here you go:

ls | awk '{print NR, $0}'

updated $0 is better than $1 since it will print the entire file name even with spaces (as hinted at by BroSlow)

Note - you do not need to use the -1 flag with ls when the output is another process - it becomes the default option. Only when you want to force output to the terminal with one file per line do you need to use it.