How to display the line number in Vim?

Solution 1:

Run :set number to add a left margin with the line numbers. Use :help 'nu to see help on the topic, including changing the margin size.

For some permanence, place the command, without the leading colon, in ~/.vimrc on UNIX/Linux based systems or in %HOMEPATH%\_vimrc.

Solution 2:

:set number

will add the line numbers to the left hand side of the buffer.

You can put that setting, along with any others you enjoy inside your .vimrc file and they will automatically get loaded whenever you start an instance of VIM.

.gvimrc is generally reserved for specific settings you want loaded when you open gvim as opposed to terminal sessions of vim or vi. More often than not this file has graphical considerations that the X server can handle.