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seq – Prints numbers from first to last in specified increments

The seq command is used to print a sequence of numbers from a starting point to an ending point in specified increments. This command is useful for generating lists of numbers or for iterating through loops in shell scripts.

Overview

The basic syntax of the seq command is as follows:

seq [OPTION]... LAST
seq [OPTION]... FIRST LAST
seq [OPTION]... FIRST INCREMENT LAST
  • LAST is the last number of the sequence.
  • FIRST is the first number of the sequence.
  • INCREMENT is the increment between each number in the sequence.

If only one argument is provided, seq will assume that it is the LAST argument and will generate a sequence of numbers from 1 to LAST. If two arguments are provided, seq will assume that the first argument is the FIRST argument and the second argument is the LAST argument. If three arguments are provided, seq will assume that the first argument is the FIRST argument, the second argument is the INCREMENT argument, and the third argument is the LAST argument.

Examples

  1. Generate a sequence of numbers from 1 to 10:
$ seq 10
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
  1. Generate a sequence of numbers from 5 to 15:
$ seq 5 15
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
  1. Generate a sequence of numbers from 0 to 100 in increments of 10:
$ seq 0 10 100
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100

Options

The following table lists the available options for the seq command:

Option Description
-f, --format=FORMAT Use a specified FORMAT for the output.
-s, --separator=STRING Use a specified STRING as the separator between numbers.
-w, --equal-width Pad the output with leading zeros to ensure that all numbers have the same width.
-h, --help Display help information and exit.
-V, --version Display version information and exit.

Troubleshooting Tips

  • If you receive an error message that says “seq: invalid floating point argument”, it means that one of the arguments you provided is not an integer. Make sure that all arguments are integers.
  • If you receive an error message that says “seq: zero increment”, it means that you provided an increment of 0. Make sure that the increment is greater than 0.

Notes

  • The seq command is not available on all Linux distributions by default. If you receive an error message that says “command not found”, you may need to install the coreutils package.

Related commands