Ronald Fischer wrote: > - Notepad++ is similar in this respect. Here you can use the plugin > "TextFX Tools", which has a command "number lines", which puts line > numbers in front of the selected text, though in just one standard > format (with leading zeroes), and I don't know how easy it is to change > this. Again, you can copy the numbered file to the clipboard and remove > the line numbers with Control-Z afterwards. You can download it from > http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/de/site.htm > > - You could put the line numbering process outside of the editor, either > by writing a trivial Ruby program which creates a file with numbers out > of a text file, or using some of the utilities which are already > available > (I use, for example, Cygwin, which has the nl command for numbering the > lines). Many editors allow running an external program on the buffer - > examples are (again) jEdit, but also the vi family and, AFIK, Scite too. > > HTH > > Ronald Thanks Ronald, i'll look at Notepad++. Currently, i'm doing the following, which actually works quite well - Set up a column in excel with '001', '002', etc. Paste text from eclipse into the next column in excel. Copy both columns back into a dummy file in eclipse (the apostrophes in the numbers are necessary for eclipse to colour code correctly here) Then paste the required chunks of code out of eclipse into word - colouring all nicely preserved. thanks for the advice everyone. i'm still surprised that this isn't a standard feature of editors though! -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.