efaq: Going to a line by number
5.41 How can I go to a certain line given its number?
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Are you sure you indeed need to go to a line by its number? Perhaps all
you want is to display a line in your source file for which a compiler
printed an error message? If so, compiling from within Emacs using the
‘M-x compile’ and ‘M-x recompile’ commands is a much more effective way
of doing that. Emacs automatically intercepts the compile error
messages, inserts them into a special buffer called ‘*compilation*’, and
lets you visit the locus of each message in the source. Type ‘C-x `’ to
step through the offending lines one by one (starting with Emacs 22, you
can also use ‘M-g M-p’ and ‘M-g M-n’ to go to the previous and next
matches directly). Click ‘mouse-2’ or press <RET> on a message text in
the ‘*compilation*’ buffer to go to the line whose number is mentioned
in that message.
But if you indeed need to go to a certain text line, type ‘M-g M-g’
(which is the default binding of the ‘goto-line’ function starting with
Emacs 22). Emacs will prompt you for the number of the line and go to
that line.
You can do this faster by invoking ‘goto-line’ with a numeric
argument that is the line’s number. For example, ‘C-u 286 M-g M-g’ will
jump to line number 286 in the current buffer.
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