I've done this in Excel for my own concordance. You can put the lines in the cells, then in another column you can automatically put 1, 2, 3, etc. down the side by highlighting the first two or three and then by dragging the pointer down to where the end of the text is. You can also modify the numbers in a different format, by selecting a custom format for the cells. Below is a sample of what I did.
Abdullah Alger
<L 1> cyninge <L 2> ðu eart se weallstan þe ða wyrhtan iu <L 3> wiðwurpon to weorce Wel þe geriseð <L 4> þæt þu heafod sie healle mærre <L 5> ond gesomnige side weallas <L 6> fæste gefoge flint unbræcne <L 7> þæt geond eorðbold eall eagna gesihþe
Quoting Murray McGillivray mmcgilli@ucalgary.ca:
Folks, I have a number of text files of poetry that I'd like to add line numbers to for concordancing, starting the numbering at 1 and continuing to the last text line, with the line numbers ending up as part of the resulting text file, each number on the relevant line before the text of that line of verse begins.
I've done this before a few times a while ago, but danged if I can remember what I used. I know I didn't write anything to do it, though I assume it's pretty easy to do so. I think it was in a text editor or word processor, but looking at vi and emacs it looks like I can only get the line numbers to display with the file, not to be added to the file, and that's true of some Windows ones as well and of Word, unless there are tricks.
The UNIX/Linux "nl" utility does basically what I want (if I pipe the output to a file, I get my text file back but with a line number and a tab added to the beginning of each line), and I can deal with the output but I remember (possibly from one of those technicolor dreams--you'll let me know!) a more interactive, less command-liney, way of doing this that would make this stage easier.
Thanks for any help.
Murray McGillivray
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