An electrical cable (1) provided with a sheath (2) having external marking. The marking is formed from a block (3) of two patterns (4, 5), the two patterns being consecutive along a length of the cable, said block being repeated at least twice along the length of the cable starting from the free end (12) of the cable. The disclosed embodiments also relates to a method of crimping a contact (7) onto such a cable, the external marking of the cable making it possible to know the position of the cable in the barrel and thus guarantee that the crimping that takes place will be of good quality.