cloc is a command-line tool designed to count blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code across multiple programming languages. It provides developers with precise metrics to analyze codebases efficiently.
Key Features:
Multi-Language Support: Analyzes source code in various programming languages, ensuring comprehensive coverage.
Version Comparison: Computes differences in blank, comment, and source lines between two versions of a codebase.
Scriptable Output: Generates reports in multiple formats, facilitating integration into automated workflows.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Built using Perl with minimal dependencies, making it highly portable across different operating systems.
File Type Handling: Efficiently processes large numbers of files and directories, accommodating diverse project structures.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for developers, project managers, and researchers needing accurate and quick line-count metrics. cloc helps optimize code reviews, assess project complexity, and track changes over time with ease. It can be installed via winget.
README
cloc
Count Lines of Code
cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.
Step 1: Download cloc (several methods, see below) or run cloc's
docker image. The Windows executable has no requirements.
The source version of cloc requires a Perl interpreter, and the
Docker version of cloc requires a Docker installation.
Step 2: Open a terminal (cmd.exe on Windows).
Step 3: Invoke cloc to count your source files, directories, archives,
or git commits.
The executable name differs depending on whether you use the
development source version (cloc), source for a
released version (cloc-2.06.pl) or a Windows executable
(cloc-2.06.exe).
On this page, cloc is the generic term
used to refer to any of these.
Say you have a directory with three different git-managed projects,
Project0, Project1, and Project2. You can use your shell's looping
capability to count the code in each. This example uses bash (scroll down for cmd.exe example):
prompt> for d in ./*/ ; do (cd "$d" && echo "$d" && cloc --vcs git); done
./Project0/
7 text files.
7 unique files.
1 file ignored.
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.71 T=0.02 s (390.2 files/s, 25687.6 lines/s)
Language files blank comment code
D 4 61 32 251
Markdown 1 9 0 38
make 1 0 0 4
SUM: 6 70 32 293
./Project1/
7 text files.
7 unique files.
0 files ignored.
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.71 T=0.02 s (293.0 files/s, 52107.1 lines/s)
Language files blank comment code
Go 7 165 282 798
SUM: 7 165 282 798
./Project2/
49 text files.
47 unique files.
13 files ignored.
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.71 T=0.10 s (399.5 files/s, 70409.4 lines/s)
cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source
code in many programming languages. Given two versions of
a code base, cloc can compute differences in blank, comment, and source
lines. It is written entirely in Perl with no dependencies outside the
standard distribution of Perl v5.6 and higher (code from some external
modules is embedded within
cloc) and so is
quite portable. cloc is known to run on many flavors of Linux, FreeBSD,
NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, z/OS, and Windows.
(To run the Perl source version of cloc on Windows one needs
ActiveState Perl 5.6.1 or
higher, Strawberry Perl,
Windows Subsystem for Linux,
Cygwin,
MobaXTerm with the Perl plug-in
installed,
or
a mingw environment and terminal such as provided by
Git for Windows.
Alternatively one can use the Windows binary of cloc
generated with PAR::Packer
to run on Windows computers that have neither Perl nor Cygwin.)
In addition to counting code in individual text files, directories,
and git repositories, cloc can also count code in archive files such
as .tar (including compressed versions), .zip, Python
wheel .whl, Jupyter notebook .ipynb, source RPMs .rpm
or .src (requires rpm2cpio),
and Debian .deb files (requires dpkg-deb).
These docker commands count lines of code in and below
the current directory:
docker run --rm -v $PWD:/tmp aldanial/cloc .
Run via docker on git-bash
docker run --rm -v "/$(pwd -W)":/tmp aldanial/cloc .
Install via package manager
Depending your operating system, one of these installation methods may
work for you (all but the last two entries for Windows require
a Perl interpreter):
npm install -g cloc # https://www.npmjs.com/package/cloc
sudo apt install cloc # Debian, Ubuntu
sudo yum install cloc # Red Hat, Fedora
sudo dnf install cloc # Fedora 22 or later
sudo pacman -S cloc # Arch
yay -S cloc-git # Arch AUR (latest git version)
sudo emerge -av dev-util/cloc # Gentoo https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-util/cloc
sudo apk add cloc # Alpine Linux
doas pkg_add cloc # OpenBSD
sudo pkg install cloc # FreeBSD
sudo port install cloc # macOS with MacPorts
brew install cloc # macOS with Homebrew
winget install AlDanial.Cloc # Windows with winget (might not work, ref https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues/849)
choco install cloc # Windows with Chocolatey
scoop install cloc # Windows with Scoop
Note: I don't control any of these packages.
If you encounter a bug in cloc using one of the above
packages, try with cloc pulled from the latest stable release here
on GitHub (link follows below) before submitting a problem report.
Download the cloc source code at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/raw/master/cloc and
save it as the file cloc (or cloc.pl, or whatever executable name you wish).
The next step depends on the operating system you're using.
On Unix-like systems, including macOS
In a terminal, go to the download directory
and make the cloc file executable, then give it a test run.
For example
» cd ~/Downloads
» chmod +x cloc
» ./cloc --version
For future use, move the file to a more convenient directory in your PATH
such as /usr/local/bin or ~/bin.
On Windows
You'll need a Perl interpreter such as Strawberry Perl
installed to run the source version of cloc.
After downloading the cloc source file, open a command prompt or PowerShell window,
navigate to the download directory (C:\TEMP in the example below), then test cloc with:
cloc is licensed under the
GNU General Public License, v 2,
excluding portions which
are copied from other sources. Code
copied from the Regexp::Common, Win32::Autoglob, and Algorithm::Diff
Perl modules is subject to the
Artistic License.
cloc has many features that make it easy to use, thorough, extensible, and portable:
Exists as a single, self-contained file that requires minimal installation effort---just download the file and run it.
Can read language comment definitions from a file and thus potentially work with computer languages that do not yet exist.
Allows results from multiple runs to be summed together by language and by project.
Can produce results in a variety of formats: plain text, Markdown, SQL, JSON, XML, YAML, comma separated values.
Can count code within compressed archives (tar balls, Zip files, Java .ear files).
Has numerous troubleshooting options.
Handles file and directory names with spaces and other unusual characters.
Has no dependencies outside the standard Perl distribution.
Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, and z/OS systems that have Perl 5.6 or higher. The source version runs on Windows with either ActiveState Perl, Strawberry Perl, Cygwin, or MobaXTerm+Perl plugin. Alternatively on Windows one can run the Windows binary which has no dependencies.
Although cloc does not need Perl modules outside those found in the
standard distribution, cloc does rely on a few external modules. Code
from three of these external modules--Regexp::Common, Win32::Autoglob,
and Algorithm::Diff--is embedded within cloc. A fourth module,
Digest::MD5, is used only if it is available. If cloc finds
Regexp::Common or Algorithm::Diff installed locally it will use those
installation. If it doesn't, cloc will install the parts of
Regexp::Common and/or Algorithm:Diff it needs to temporary directories
that are created at the start of a cloc run then removed when the run is
complete. The necessary code from Regexp::Common v2.120 and
Algorithm::Diff v1.1902 are embedded within the cloc source code (see
subroutines Install_Regexp_Common() and Install_Algorithm_Diff() ).
Only three lines are needed from Win32::Autoglob and these are included
directly in cloc.
Additionally, cloc will use Digest::MD5 to validate uniqueness among
equally-sized input files if Digest::MD5 is installed locally.
A parallel processing option, --processes=N, was introduced with
cloc version 1.76 to enable faster runs on multi-core machines. However,
to use it, one must have the module Parallel::ForkManager installed.
This module does not work reliably on Windows so parallel processing
will only work on Unix-like operating systems.
The Windows binary is built on a computer that has both Regexp::Common
and Digest::MD5 installed locally.
The most robust option for creating a Windows executable of
cloc is to use ActiveState's Perl Development Kit.
It includes a utility, perlapp, which can build stand-alone
Windows, Mac, and Linux binaries of Perl source code.
perl2exe
will also do the trick. If you do have perl2exe, modify lines
84-87 in the cloc source code for a minor code
modification that is necessary to make a cloc Windows executable.
Otherwise, to build a Windows executable with pp from
PAR::Packer, first install a Windows-based Perl distribution
(for example Strawberry Perl or ActivePerl) following their
instructions. Next, open a command prompt, aka a DOS window and install
the PAR::Packer module. Finally, invoke the newly installed pp
command with the cloc source code to create an .exe file:
A variation on the instructions above is if you installed the portable
version of Strawberry Perl, you will need to run portableshell.bat first
to properly set up your environment.
The Windows executable in the Releases section, cloc-2.06.exe,
was built on a 64 bit Windows 11 computer using
Strawberry Perl
5.30.2 and
PAR::Packer
to build the .exe.
Is the Windows executable safe to run? Does it have malware?
Ideally, no one would need the Windows executable because they
have a Perl interpreter installed on their machines and can
run the cloc source file.
On centrally-managed corporate Windows machines, however, this
this may be difficult or impossible.
The Windows executable distributed with cloc is provided as
a best-effort of a virus and malware-free .exe.
You are encouraged to run your own virus scanners against the
executable and also check sites such
https://www.virustotal.com/ .
The entries for recent versions are:
Windows executables of cloc versions 1.60 and earlier, created with
perl2exe as noted above, are about 1.6 MB, while versions 1.62 and 1.54, created
with PAR::Packer, are 11 MB.
Version 1.66, built with a newer version of PAR::Packer, is about 5.5 MB.
Why are the PAR::Packer, executables so
much larger than those built with perl2exe? My theory is that perl2exe
uses smarter tree pruning logic
than PAR::Packer, but that's pure speculation.
cloc is a command line program that takes file, directory, and/or
archive names as inputs. Here's an example of running cloc against the
Perl v5.22.0 source distribution:
To run cloc on Windows computers, open up a command (aka DOS) window
and invoke cloc.exe from the command line there.
Alternatively, try ClocViewer, the GUI wrapper around cloc found at
https://github.com/Roemer/ClocViewer.
Count, or compute differences of, physical lines of source code in the
given files (may be archives such as compressed tarballs or zip files,
or git commit hashes or branch names) and/or recursively below the
given directories.
Input Options
--extract-with=<cmd> This option is only needed if cloc is unable
to figure out how to extract the contents of
the input file(s) by itself.
Use <cmd> to extract binary archive files (e.g.:
.tar.gz, .zip, .Z). Use the literal '>FILE<' as
a stand-in for the actual file(s) to be
extracted. For example, to count lines of code
in the input files
gcc-4.2.tar.gz perl-5.8.8.tar.gz
on Unix use
--extract-with='gzip -dc >FILE< | tar xf -'
or, if you have GNU tar,
--extract-with='tar zxf >FILE<'
and on Windows use, for example:
--extract-with=""c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe" -e -o >FILE< ."
(if WinZip is installed there).
--list-file=<file> Take the list of file and/or directory names to
process from <file>, which has one file/directory
name per line. Only exact matches are counted;
relative path names will be resolved starting from
the directory where cloc is invoked. Set <file>
to - to read file names from a STDIN pipe.
See also --exclude-list-file.
--diff-list-file=<file> Take the pairs of file names to be diff'ed from
<file>, whose format matches the output of
--diff-alignment. (Run with that option to
see a sample.) The language identifier at the
end of each line is ignored. This enables --diff
mode and bypasses file pair alignment logic.
--vcs=<VCS> Invoke a system call to <VCS> to obtain a list of
files to work on. If <VCS> is 'git', then will
invoke 'git ls-files' to get a file list and
'git submodule status' to get a list of submodules
whose contents will be ignored. See also --git
which accepts git commit hashes and branch names.
If <VCS> is 'svn' then will invoke 'svn list -R'.
The primary benefit is that cloc will then skip
files explicitly excluded by the versioning tool
in question, ie, those in .gitignore or have the
svn:ignore property.
Alternatively <VCS> may be any system command
that generates a list of files.
Note: cloc must be in a directory which can read
the files as they are returned by <VCS>. cloc will
not download files from remote repositories.
'svn list -R' may refer to a remote repository
to obtain file names (and therefore may require
authentication to the remote repository), but
the files themselves must be local.
Setting <VCS> to 'auto' selects between 'git'
and 'svn' (or neither) depending on the presence
of a .git or .svn subdirectory below the directory
where cloc is invoked. --files-from is a synonym
for --vcs.
--unicode Check binary files to see if they contain Unicode
expanded ASCII text. This causes performance to
drop noticeably.
Processing Options
--autoconf Count .in files (as processed by GNU autoconf) of
recognized languages. See also --no-autogen.
--by-file Report results for every source file encountered.
--by-file-by-lang Report results for every source file encountered
in addition to reporting by language.
--config <file> Read command line switches from <file> instead of
the default location of /home/al/.config/cloc/options.txt.
The file should contain one switch, along with
arguments (if any), per line. Blank lines and lines
beginning with '#' are skipped. Options given on
the command line take priority over entries read from
the file.
--count-and-diff <set1> <set2>
First perform direct code counts of source file(s)
of <set1> and <set2> separately, then perform a diff
of these. Inputs may be pairs of files, directories,
or archives. If --out or --report-file is given,
three output files will be created, one for each
of the two counts and one for the diff. See also
--diff, --diff-alignment, --diff-timeout,
--ignore-case, --ignore-whitespace.
--diff <set1> <set2> Compute differences in code and comments between
source file(s) of <set1> and <set2>. The inputs
may be any mix of files, directories, archives,
or git commit hashes. Use --diff-alignment to
generate a list showing which file pairs where
compared. When comparing git branches, only files
which have changed in either commit are compared.
See also --git, --count-and-diff, --diff-alignment,
--diff-list-file, --diff-timeout, --ignore-case,
--ignore-whitespace.
--diff-timeout <N> Ignore files which take more than <N> seconds
to process. Default is 10 seconds. Setting <N>
to 0 allows unlimited time. (Large files with many
repeated lines can cause Algorithm::Diff::sdiff()
to take hours.) See also --timeout.
--docstring-as-code cloc considers docstrings to be comments, but this is
not always correct as docstrings represent regular
strings when they appear on the right hand side of an
assignment or as function arguments. This switch
forces docstrings to be counted as code.
--follow-links [Unix only] Follow symbolic links to directories
(sym links to files are always followed).
See also --stat.
--force-lang=<lang>[,<ext>]
Process all files that have a <ext> extension
with the counter for language <lang>. For
example, to count all .f files with the
Fortran 90 counter (which expects files to
end with .f90) instead of the default Fortran 77
counter, use
--force-lang="Fortran 90,f"
If <ext> is omitted, every file will be counted
with the <lang> counter. This option can be
specified multiple times (but that is only
useful when <ext> is given each time).
See also --script-lang, --lang-no-ext.
--force-lang-def=<file> Load language processing filters from <file>,
then use these filters instead of the built-in
filters. Note: languages which map to the same
file extension (for example:
MATLAB/Mathematica/Objective-C/MUMPS/Mercury;
Pascal/PHP; Lisp/OpenCL; Lisp/Julia; Perl/Prolog)
will be ignored as these require additional
processing that is not expressed in language
definition files. Use --read-lang-def to define
new language filters without replacing built-in
filters (see also --write-lang-def,
--write-lang-def-incl-dup).
--git Forces the inputs to be interpreted as git targets
(commit hashes, branch names, et cetera) if these
are not first identified as file or directory
names. This option overrides the --vcs=git logic
if this is given; in other words, --git gets its
list of files to work on directly from git using
the hash or branch name rather than from
'git ls-files'. This option can be used with
--diff to perform line count diffs between git
commits, or between a git commit and a file,
directory, or archive. Use -v/--verbose to see
the git system commands cloc issues.
--git-diff-rel Same as --git --diff, or just --diff if the inputs
are recognized as git targets. Only files which
have changed in either commit are compared.
--git-diff-all Git diff strategy #2: compare all files in the
repository between the two commits.
--ignore-whitespace Ignore horizontal white space when comparing files
with --diff. See also --ignore-case.
--ignore-case Ignore changes in case within file contents;
consider upper- and lowercase letters equivalent
when comparing files with --diff. See also
--ignore-whitespace.
--ignore-case-ext Ignore case of file name extensions. This will
cause problems counting some languages
(specifically, .c and .C are associated with C and
C++; this switch would count .C files as C rather
than C++ on *nix operating systems). File name
case insensitivity is always true on Windows.
--lang-no-ext=<lang> Count files without extensions using the <lang>
counter. This option overrides internal logic
for files without extensions (where such files
are checked against known scripting languages
by examining the first line for #!). See also
--force-lang, --script-lang.
--max-file-size=<MB> Skip files larger than <MB> megabytes when
traversing directories. By default, <MB>=100.
cloc's memory requirement is roughly twenty times
larger than the largest file so running with
files larger than 100 MB on a computer with less
than 2 GB of memory will cause problems.
Note: this check does not apply to files
explicitly passed as command line arguments.
--no-autogen[=list] Ignore files generated by code-production systems
such as GNU autoconf. To see a list of these files
(then exit), run with --no-autogen list
See also --autoconf.
--original-dir [Only effective in combination with
--strip-comments] Write the stripped files
to the same directory as the original files.
--read-binary-files Process binary files in addition to text files.
This is usually a bad idea and should only be
attempted with text files that have embedded
binary data.
--read-lang-def=<file> Load new language processing filters from <file>
and merge them with those already known to cloc.
If <file> defines a language cloc already knows
about, cloc's definition will take precedence.
Use --force-lang-def to over-ride cloc's
definitions (see also --write-lang-def,
--write-lang-def-incl-dup).
--script-lang=<lang>,<s> Process all files that invoke <s> as a #!
scripting language with the counter for language
<lang>. For example, files that begin with
#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.8
will be counted with the Perl counter by using
--script-lang=Perl,perl5.8.8
The language name is case insensitive but the
name of the script language executable, <s>,
must have the right case. This option can be
specified multiple times. See also --force-lang,
--lang-no-ext.
--sdir=<dir> Use <dir> as the scratch directory instead of
letting File::Temp chose the location. Files
written to this location are not removed at
the end of the run (as they are with File::Temp).
--skip-uniqueness Skip the file uniqueness check. This will give
a performance boost at the expense of counting
files with identical contents multiple times
(if such duplicates exist).
--stat Some file systems (AFS, CD-ROM, FAT, HPFS, SMB)
do not have directory 'nlink' counts that match
the number of its subdirectories. Consequently
cloc may undercount or completely skip the
contents of such file systems. This switch forces
File::Find to stat directories to obtain the
correct count. File search speed will decrease.
See also --follow-links.
--stdin-name=<file> Give a file name to use to determine the language
for standard input. (Use - as the input name to
receive source code via STDIN.)
--strip-comments=<ext> For each file processed, write to the current
directory a version of the file which has blank
and commented lines removed (in-line comments
persist). The name of each stripped file is the
original file name with .<ext> appended to it.
It is written to the current directory unless
--original-dir is on.
--strip-str-comments Replace comment markers embedded in strings with
'xx'. This attempts to work around a limitation
in Regexp::Common::Comment where comment markers
embedded in strings are seen as actual comment
markers and not strings, often resulting in a
'Complex regular subexpression recursion limit'
warning and incorrect counts. There are two
disadvantages to using this switch: 1/code count
performance drops, and 2/code generated with
--strip-comments will contain different strings
where ever embedded comments are found.
--sum-reports Input arguments are report files previously
created with the --report-file option in plain
format (eg. not JSON, YAML, XML, or SQL).
Makes a cumulative set of results containing the
sum of data from the individual report files.
--timeout <N> Ignore files which take more than <N> seconds
to process at any of the language's filter stages.
The default maximum number of seconds spent on a
filter stage is the number of lines in the file
divided by one thousand. Setting <N> to 0 allows
unlimited time. See also --diff-timeout.
--processes=NUM [Available only on systems with a recent version
of the Parallel::ForkManager module. Not
available on Windows.] Sets the maximum number of
cores that cloc uses. The default value of 0
disables multiprocessing.
--unix Override the operating system autodetection
logic and run in UNIX mode. See also
--windows, --show-os.
--use-sloccount If SLOCCount is installed, use its compiled
executables c_count, java_count, pascal_count,
php_count, and xml_count instead of cloc's
counters. SLOCCount's compiled counters are
substantially faster than cloc's and may give
a performance improvement when counting projects
with large files. However, these cloc-specific
features will not be available: --diff,
--count-and-diff, --strip-comments, --unicode.
--windows Override the operating system autodetection
logic and run in Microsoft Windows mode.
See also --unix, --show-os.
Filter Options
--include-content=<regex> Only count files containing text that matches the
given regular expression.
--exclude-content=<regex> Exclude files containing text that matches the given
regular expression.
--exclude-dir=<D1>[,D2,] Exclude the given comma separated directories
D1, D2, D3, et cetera, from being scanned. For
example --exclude-dir=.cache,test will skip
all files and subdirectories that have /.cache/
or /test/ as their parent directory.
Directories named .bzr, .cvs, .hg, .git, .svn,
and .snapshot are always excluded.
This option only works with individual directory
names so including file path separators is not
allowed. Use --fullpath and --not-match-d=<regex>
to supply a regex matching multiple subdirectories.
--exclude-ext=<ext1>[,<ext2>[...]]
Do not count files having the given file name
extensions.
--exclude-lang=<L1>[,L2[...]]
Exclude the given comma separated languages
L1, L2, L3, et cetera, from being counted.
--exclude-list-file=<file> Ignore files and/or directories whose names
appear in <file>. <file> should have one file
name per line. Only exact matches are ignored;
relative path names will be resolved starting from
the directory where cloc is invoked.
See also --list-file.
--fullpath Modifies the behavior of --match-f, --not-match-f,
and --not-match-d to include the file's path
in the regex, not just the file's basename.
(This does not expand each file to include its
absolute path, instead it uses as much of
the path as is passed in to cloc.)
Note: --match-d always looks at the full
path and therefore is unaffected by --fullpath.
--include-ext=<ext1>[,ext2[...]]
Count only languages having the given comma
separated file extensions. Use --show-ext to
see the recognized extensions.
--include-lang=<L1>[,L2[...]]
Count only the given comma separated languages
L1, L2, L3, et cetera. Use --show-lang to see
the list of recognized languages.
--match-d=<regex> Only count files in directories matching the Perl
regex. For example
--match-d='/(src|include)/'
only counts files in directories containing
/src/ or /include/. Unlike --not-match-d,
--match-f, and --not-match-f, --match-d always
compares the fully qualified path against the
regex.
--not-match-d=<regex> Count all files except those in directories
matching the Perl regex. Only the trailing
directory name is compared, for example, when
counting in /usr/local/lib, only 'lib' is
compared to the regex.
Add --fullpath to compare parent directories to
the regex.
Do not include file path separators at the
beginning or end of the regex.
--match-f=<regex> Only count files whose basenames match the Perl
regex. For example
--match-f='^[Ww]idget'
only counts files that start with Widget or widget.
Add --fullpath to include parent directories
in the regex instead of just the basename.
--not-match-f=<regex> Count all files except those whose basenames
match the Perl regex. Add --fullpath to include
parent directories in the regex instead of just
the basename.
--skip-archive=<regex> Ignore files that end with the given Perl regular
expression. For example, if given
--skip-archive='(zip|tar(.(gz|Z|bz2|xz|7z))?)'
the code will skip files that end with .zip,
.tar, .tar.gz, .tar.Z, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, and
.tar.7z.
--skip-win-hidden On Windows, ignore hidden files.
Debug Options
--categorized=<file> Save file sizes in bytes, identified languages
and names of categorized files to <file>.
--counted=<file> Save names of processed source files to <file>.
--diff-alignment=<file> Write to <file> a list of files and file pairs
showing which files were added, removed, and/or
compared during a run with --diff. This switch
forces the --diff mode on.
--explain=<lang> Print the filters used to remove comments for
language <lang> and exit. In some cases the
filters refer to Perl subroutines rather than
regular expressions. An examination of the
source code may be needed for further explanation.
--help Print this usage information and exit.
--found=<file> Save names of every file found to <file>.
--ignored=<file> Save names of ignored files and the reason they
were ignored to <file>.
--print-filter-stages Print processed source code before and after
each filter is applied.
--show-ext[=<ext>] Print information about all known (or just the
given) file extensions and exit.
--show-lang[=<lang>] Print information about all known (or just the
given) languages and exit.
--show-os Print the value of the operating system mode
and exit. See also --unix, --windows.
-v[=<n>] Verbose switch (optional numeric value).
-verbose[=<n>] Long form of -v.
--version Print the version of this program and exit.
--write-lang-def=<file> Writes to <file> the language processing filters
then exits. Useful as a first step to creating
custom language definitions. Note: languages which
map to the same file extension will be excluded.
(See also --force-lang-def, --read-lang-def).
--write-lang-def-incl-dup=<file>
Same as --write-lang-def, but includes duplicated
extensions. This generates a problematic language
definition file because cloc will refuse to use
it until duplicates are removed.
Output Options
--3 Print third-generation language output.
(This option can cause report summation to fail
if some reports were produced with this option
while others were produced without it.)
--by-percent X Instead of comment and blank line counts, show
these values as percentages based on the value
of X in the denominator:
X = 'c' -> # lines of code
X = 'cm' -> # lines of code + comments
X = 'cb' -> # lines of code + blanks
X = 'cmb' -> # lines of code + comments + blanks
For example, if using method 'c' and your code
has twice as many lines of comments as lines
of code, the value in the comment column will
be 200%. The code column remains a line count.
--csv Write the results as comma separated values.
--csv-delimiter=<C> Use the character <C> as the delimiter for comma
separated files instead of ,. This switch forces --csv to be on.
--file-encoding=<E> Write output files using the <E> encoding instead of
the default ASCII (<E> = 'UTF-7'). Examples: 'UTF-16',
'euc-kr', 'iso-8859-16'. Known encodings can be
printed with
perl -MEncode -e 'print join("\n", Encode->encodings(":all")), "\n"'
--hide-rate Do not show line and file processing rates in the
output header. This makes output deterministic.
--json Write the results as JavaScript Object Notation
(JSON) formatted output.
--md Write the results as Markdown-formatted text.
--out=<file> Synonym for --report-file=<file>.
--percent Show counts as percentages of sums for each column.
Same as '--by-percent t'.
--progress-rate=<n> Show progress update after every <n> files are
processed (default <n>=100). Set <n> to 0 to
suppress progress output (useful when redirecting
output to STDOUT).
--quiet Suppress all information messages except for
the final report.
--report-file=<file> Write the results to <file> instead of STDOUT.
--sql=<file> Write results as SQL create and insert statements
which can be read by a database program such as
SQLite. If <file> is -, output is sent to STDOUT.
--sql-append Append SQL insert statements to the file specified
by --sql and do not generate table creation
statements. Only valid with the --sql option.
--sql-project=<name> Use <name> as the project identifier for the
current run. Only valid with the --sql option.
--sql-style=<style> Write SQL statements in the given style instead
of the default SQLite format. Styles include
'Oracle' and 'Named_Columns'.
--sum-one For plain text reports, show the SUM: output line
even if only one input file is processed.
--thousands-delimiter=<C> Divides numbers with many digits (i.e. numbers
over 999) into groups using the character as
delimiter (e.g. for = '.': 12345 -> 12.345).
Only works with the '--fmt' option.
Sample values: '.', ',', '_', ' '
Synonym: --ksep
--xml Write the results in XML.
--xsl=<file> Reference <file> as an XSL stylesheet within
the XML output. If <file> is 1 (numeric one),
writes a default stylesheet, cloc.xsl (or
cloc-diff.xsl if --diff is also given).
This switch forces --xml on.
--yaml Write the results in YAML.
The above list can be customized by reading language definitions from a
file with the --read-lang-def or --force-lang-def options.
These file extensions map to multiple languages:
cj files could be Clojure or Cangjie
cl files could be Lisp or OpenCL
cls files could be Visual Basic, TeX or Apex Class
conf files could be BitBake or plain text
cs files could be C# or Smalltalk
d files could be D or dtrace
f files could be Fortran 77 or Forth
fnc files could be Oracle PL or SQL
for files could be Fortran 77 or Forth
fs files could be F# or Forth
inc files could be PHP, Pascal or BitBake
itk files could be Tcl or Tk
jl files could be Lisp or Julia
lit files could be PL or M
m files could be MATLAB, Mathematica, Objective-C, MUMPS or Mercury
p6 files could be Perl or Prolog
pl files could be Perl or Prolog
PL files could be Perl or Prolog
pp files could be Pascal or Puppet
pro files could be IDL, Qt Project, Prolog or ProGuard
ts files could be TypeScript or Qt Linguist
ui files could be Qt or Glade
v files could be Verilog-SystemVerilog or Coq
cloc has subroutines that attempt to identify the correct language based
on the file's contents for these special cases. Language identification
accuracy is a function of how much code the file contains; .m files with
just one or two lines for example, seldom have enough information to
correctly distinguish between MATLAB, Mercury, MUMPS, or Objective-C.
Languages with file extension collisions are difficult to customize with
--read-lang-def or --force-lang-def as they have no mechanism to
identify languages with common extensions. In this situation one must
modify the cloc source code.
cloc's method of operation resembles SLOCCount's: First, create a list
of files to consider. Next, attempt to determine whether or not found
files contain recognized computer language source code. Finally, for
files identified as source files, invoke language-specific routines to
count the number of source lines.
A more detailed description:
If the input file is an archive (such as a .tar.gz or .zip file),
create a temporary directory and expand the archive there using a
system call to an appropriate underlying utility (tar, bzip2, unzip,
etc) then add this temporary directory as one of the inputs. (This
works more reliably on Unix than on Windows.)
Use File::Find to recursively descend the input directories and make
a list of candidate file names. Ignore binary and zero-sized files.
Make sure the files in the candidate list have unique contents
(first by comparing file sizes, then, for similarly sized files,
compare MD5 hashes of the file contents with Digest::MD5). For each
set of identical files, remove all but the first copy, as determined
by a lexical sort, of identical files from the set. The removed
files are not included in the report. (The --skip-uniqueness switch
disables the uniqueness tests and forces all copies of files to be
included in the report.) See also the --ignored= switch to see which
files were ignored and why.
Scan the candidate file list for file extensions which cloc
associates with programming languages (see the --show-lang and
--show-ext options). Files which match are classified as
containing source
code for that language. Each file without an extension is opened
and its first line read to see if it is a Unix shell script
(anything that begins with #!). If it is shell script, the file is
classified by that scripting language (if the language is
recognized). If the file does not have a recognized extension or is
not a recognized scripting language, the file is ignored.
All remaining files in the candidate list should now be source files
for known programming languages. For each of these files:
Read the entire file into memory.
Count the number of lines (= Loriginal).
Remove blank lines, then count again (= Lnon_blank).
Loop over the comment filters defined for this language. (For
example, C++ has two filters: (1) remove lines that start with
optional whitespace followed by // and (2) remove text between
/* and */) Apply each filter to the code to remove comments.
Count the left over lines (= Lcode).
Save the counts for this language:
blank lines = Loriginal - Lnon_blank
comment lines = Lnon_blank - Lcode
code lines = Lcode
The options modify the algorithm slightly. The --read-lang-def option
for example allows the user to read definitions of comment filters,
known file extensions, and known scripting languages from a file. The
code for this option is processed between Steps 2 and 3.
How can you tell if cloc correctly identifies comments? One way to
convince yourself cloc is doing the right thing is to use its
--strip-comments option to remove comments and blank lines from files, then
compare the stripped-down files to originals.
Let's try this out with the SQLite amalgamation, a C file containing all
code needed to build the SQLite library along with a header file:
prompt> tar zxf sqlite-amalgamation-3.5.6.tar.gz
prompt> cd sqlite-3.5.6/
prompt> cloc --strip-comments=nc sqlite.c
1 text file.
1 unique file.
Wrote sqlite3.c.nc
0 files ignored.
Language files blank comment code scale 3rd gen. equiv
C 1 5167 26827 50901 x 0.77 = 39193.77
The extension argument given to --strip-comments is arbitrary; here nc was used as an abbreviation for "no comments".
cloc removed over 31,000 lines from the file:
prompt> wc -l sqlite3.c sqlite3.c.nc
82895 sqlite3.c
50901 sqlite3.c.nc
133796 total
prompt> echo "82895 - 50901" | bc
31994
We can now compare the original file, sqlite3.c and the one stripped of
comments, sqlite3.c.nc with tools like diff or vimdiff and see what
exactly cloc considered comments and blank lines. A rigorous proof that
the stripped-down file contains the same C code as the original is to
compile these files and compare checksums of the resulting object files.
cloc removed over 31,000 lines of comments and blanks but did not modify the source code in any significant way since the resulting object file matches the original.
Versions of cloc before v1.07 required an
--extract-with=CMD option to tell cloc how
to expand an archive file. Beginning with v1.07 this is extraction is
attempted automatically. At the moment the automatic extraction method works
reasonably well on Unix-type OS's for the following file types:
.tar.gz,
.tar.bz2,
.tar.xz,
.tgz,
.zip,
.ear,
.deb.
Some of these extensions work on Windows if one has WinZip installed
in the default location (C:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe).
Additionally, with newer versions of WinZip, the
[http://www.winzip.com/downcl.htm](command line add-on)
is needed for correct operation; in this case one would invoke cloc with
something like
In situations where the automatic extraction fails, one can try the
--extract-with=CMD
option to count lines of code within tar files, Zip files, or
other compressed archives for which one has an extraction tool.
cloc takes the user-provided extraction command and expands the archive
to a temporary directory (created with File::Temp),
counts the lines of code in the temporary directory,
then removes that directory. While not especially helpful when dealing
with a single compressed archive (after all, if you're going to type
the extraction command anyway why not just manually expand the archive?)
this option is handy for working with several archives at once.
For example, say you have the following source tarballs on a Unix machine
perl-5.8.5.tar.gz
Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
and you want to count all the code within them. The command would be
cloc --extract-with='gzip -dc >FILE< | tar xf -' perl-5.8.5.tar.gz Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
If that Unix machine has GNU tar (which can uncompress and extract in
one step) the command can be shortened to
Java .ear files are Zip files that contain additional Zip
files. cloc can handle nested compressed archives without
difficulty--provided all such files are compressed and archived in the
same way. Examples of counting a
Java .ear file in Unix and Windows:
The --diff switch allows one to measure the relative change in
source code and comments between two versions of a file, directory,
or archive. Differences reveal much more than absolute code
counts of two file versions. For example, say a source file
has 100 lines and its developer delivers a newer version with
102 lines. Did the developer add two comment lines,
or delete seventeen source
lines and add fourteen source lines and five comment lines, or did
the developer
do a complete rewrite, discarding all 100 original lines and
adding 102 lines of all new source? The diff option tells how
many lines of source were added, removed, modified or stayed
the same, and how many lines of comments were added, removed,
modified or stayed the same.
Differences in blank lines are handled much more coarsely
because these are stripped by cloc early on. Unless a
file pair is identical, cloc will report only differences
in absolute counts of blank lines. In other words, one
can expect to see only entries for 'added' if the second
file has more blanks than the first, and 'removed' if the
situation is reversed. The entry for 'same' will be non-zero
only when the two files are identical.
In addition to file pairs, one can give cloc pairs of
directories, or pairs of file archives, or a file archive
and a directory. cloc will try to align
file pairs within the directories or archives and compare diffs
for each pair. For example, to see what changed between
GCC 4.4.0 and 4.5.0 one could do
cloc --diff gcc-4.4.0.tar.bz2 gcc-4.5.0.tar.bz2
Be prepared to wait a while for the results though; the --diff
option runs much more slowly than an absolute code count.
To see how cloc aligns files between the two archives, use the
--diff-alignment option
to produce the file align.txt which shows the file pairs as well
as files added and deleted. The symbols == and != before each
file pair indicate if the files are identical (==)
or if they have different content (!=).
Here's sample output showing the difference between the Python 2.6.6 and 2.7
releases:
prompt> cloc --diff Python-2.7.9.tgz Python-2.7.10.tar.xz
4315 text files.
4313 text files.s
2173 files ignored.
A pair of errors occurred.
The first pair was caused by timing out when computing diffs of the file
Python-X/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c in each Python version.
This file has > 26,000 lines of C code and takes more than
10 seconds--the default maximum duration for diff'ing a
single file--on my slow computer. (Note: this refers to
performing differences with
the sdiff() function in the Perl Algorithm::Diff module,
not the command line diff utility.) This error can be
overcome by raising the time to, say, 20 seconds
with --diff-timeout 20.
The second error is more problematic. The files
Python-X/Mac/Modules/qd/qdsupport.py
include Python docstring (text between pairs of triple quotes)
containing C comments. cloc treats docstrings as comments and handles them
by first converting them to C comments, then using the C comment removing
regular expression. Nested C comments yield erroneous results however.
cloc can write its language comment definitions to a file or can read
comment definitions from a file, overriding the built-in definitions.
This can be useful when you want to use cloc to count lines of a
language not yet included, to change association of file extensions
to languages, or to modify the way existing languages are counted.
The easiest way to create a custom language definition file is to
make cloc write its definitions to a file, then modify that file:
Unix> cloc --write-lang-def=my_definitions.txt
creates the file my_definitions.txt which can be modified
then read back in with either the --read-lang-def or
--force-lang-def option. The difference between the options is
former merges language definitions from the given file in with
cloc's internal definitions with cloc's taking precedence
if there are overlaps. The --force-lang-def option, on the
other hand, replaces cloc's definitions completely.
This option has a disadvantage in preventing cloc from counting
languages whose extensions map to multiple languages
as these languages require additional logic that is not easily
expressed in a definitions file.
Unix> cloc --read-lang-def=my_definitions.txt file1 file2 dir1 ...
Each language entry has four parts:
The language name starting in column 1.
One or more comment filters starting in column 5.
One or more filename extensions starting in column 5.
A 3rd generation scale factor starting in column 5.
This entry must be provided
but its value is not important
unless you want to compare your language to a hypothetical
third generation programming language.
A filter defines a method to remove comment text from the source file.
For example the entry for C++ looks like this
C++
filter call_regexp_common C++
filter remove_inline //.*$
extension C
extension c++
extension cc
extension cpp
extension cxx
extension pcc
3rd_gen_scale 1.51
end_of_line_continuation \$
C++ has two filters: first, remove lines matching
Regexp::Common's C++ comment regex.
The second filter using remove_inline is currently
unused. Its intent is to identify lines with both
code and comments and it may be implemented in the future.
A more complete discussion of the different filter options may appear
here in the future. The output of cloc's
--write-lang-def option should provide enough examples
for motivated individuals to modify or extend cloc's language definitions.
If you manage multiple software projects you might be interested in
seeing line counts by project, not just by language.
Say you manage three software projects called MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
The teams responsible for each of these projects run cloc on their
source code and provide you with the output.
For example, the MariaDB team does
While these three files are interesting, you also want to see
the combined counts from all projects.
That can be done with cloc's --sum_reports
option:
Unix> cloc --sum-reports --out=databases mariadb-10.1.txt sqlite-3081101.txt postgresql-9.4.4.txt
Wrote databases.lang
Wrote databases.file
The report combination produces two output files, one for sums by
programming language (databases.lang) and one by project
(databases.file).
Their contents are
Unix> cat databases.lang
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65
Report files themselves can be summed together. Say you also manage
development of Perl and Python and you want to keep track
of those line counts separately from your database projects. First
create reports for Perl and Python separately:
One limitation of the --sum-reports feature is that the individual counts must
be saved in the plain text format. Counts saved as
XML, JSON, YAML, or SQL will produce errors if used in a summation.
Cloc can write results in the form of SQL table create and insert
statements for use
with relational database programs such as SQLite, MySQL,
PostgreSQL, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL.
Once the code count information is in a database,
the information can be interrogated and displayed in interesting ways.
A database created from cloc SQL output has two tables,
metadata and t:
Table metadata:
Field
Type
id
integer primary key
timestamp
text
project
text
elapsed_s
text
Table t:
Field
Type
project
text
language
text
file
text
nBlank
integer
nComment
integer
nCode
integer
nScaled
real
foreign key (id)
references metadata (id)
The metadata table contains information about when the cloc run
was made. Run time is stored two ways: as Unix epoch
seconds in id and as an ISO 8601 formatted text string
in the local time zone
(for example 2024-03-01 14:19:41) in timestamp.
The --sql-append switch allows one to combine
many runs in a single database; each run adds a
row to the metadata table.
The code count information resides in table t.
The id key makes it easy to associate a run's code count with
its metadata.
Let's repeat the code count examples of Perl, Python, SQLite, MySQL and
PostgreSQL tarballs shown in the
Combine Reports
example above, this time
using the SQL output options and the
SQLite
database engine.
The --sql switch tells cloc to generate output in the form
of SQL table create and insert commands. The switch takes
an argument of a file name to write these SQL statements into, or,
if the argument is 1 (numeric one), streams output to STDOUT.
Since the SQLite command line program, sqlite3, can read
commands from STDIN, we can dispense with storing SQL statements to
a file and use --sql 1 to pipe data directly into the
SQLite executable:
The --sql-project mariadb part is optional; there's no need
to specify a project name when working with just one code base. However,
since we'll be adding code counts from four other tarballs, we'll only
be able to identify data by input source if we supply a
project name for each run.
Now that we have a database we will need to pass in the --sql-append
switch to tell cloc not to wipe out this database but instead add more data:
Now the fun begins--we have a database, code.db, with lots of
information about the five projects and can query it
for all manner of interesting facts.
Which is the longest file over all projects?
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,nBlank+nComment+nCode as nL from t
where nL = (select max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) from t)'
sqlite3's default output format leaves a bit to be desired.
We can add an option to the program's rc file,
~/.sqliterc, to show column headers:
.header on
One might be tempted to also include
.mode column
in ~/.sqliterc but this causes problems when the output has more than
one row since the widths of entries in the first row govern the maximum
width for all subsequent rows. Often this leads to truncated output--not
at all desirable. One option is to write a custom SQLite output
formatter such as sqlite_formatter, included with cloc.
To use it, simply pass sqlite3's STDOUT into sqlite_formatter
via a pipe:
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,nBlank+nComment+nCode as nL from t
where nL = (select max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) from t)' | ./sqlite_formatter
-- Loading resources from ~/.sqliterc
Project File nL
If the "Project File" line doesn't appear, add .header on to your
~/.sqliterc file as explained above.
What is the longest file over all projects?
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,nBlank+nComment+nCode as nL from t
where nL = (select max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) from t)' | sqlite_formatter
Which C source files with more than 300 lines have a comment ratio below 1%?
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project, file, nCode, nComment,
(100.0*nComment)/(nComment+nCode) as comment_ratio from t
where language="C" and nCode > 300 and
comment_ratio < 1 order by comment_ratio;' | sqlite_formatter
What are the ten longest files (based on code lines) that have no comments at all? Exclude header, .html, and YAML files.
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project, file, nCode from t
where nComment = 0 and
language not in ("C/C++ Header", "YAML", "HTML")
order by nCode desc limit 10;' | sqlite_formatter
What are the most popular languages (in terms of lines
of code) in each project?
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project, language, sum(nCode) as SumCode from t
group by project,language
order by project,SumCode desc;' | sqlite_formatter
Project Language SumCode
mariadb C++ 983026
mariadb C 715018
mariadb C/C++ Header 209394
mariadb Bourne Shell 61943
mariadb Perl 35562
mariadb Pascal 32541
mariadb HTML 16489
mariadb Javascript 15540
mariadb m4 14215
mariadb CMake 12206
mariadb XML 5210
mariadb Ruby 4998
mariadb Puppet 3848
mariadb make 3631
mariadb SQL 3405
mariadb Python 2545
mariadb Bourne Again Shell 1604
mariadb Windows Module Definition 1211
mariadb lex 991
mariadb yacc 810
mariadb DOS Batch 700
mariadb Prolog 448
mariadb RobotFramework 441
mariadb CSS 393
mariadb JSON 359
mariadb dtrace 306
mariadb Windows Resource File 250
mariadb Assembly 237
mariadb WiX source 155
mariadb Visual Basic 88
mariadb YAML 65
mariadb PHP 24
mariadb SKILL 16
mariadb sed 16
mariadb Windows Message File 6
mariadb D 4
mariadb diff 4
perl Perl 536445
perl C 155648
perl C/C++ Header 147858
perl Bourne Shell 42668
perl Pascal 8592
perl XML 2410
perl YAML 2078
perl C++ 2033
perl make 1986
perl Prolog 1146
perl JSON 1037
perl yacc 998
perl Windows Message File 489
perl DOS Batch 389
perl Windows Resource File 85
perl D 8
perl Lisp 4
postgresql HTML 785991
postgresql C 736519
postgresql C/C++ Header 57014
postgresql SQL 51926
postgresql yacc 28491
postgresql Bourne Shell 17170
postgresql Perl 9456
postgresql lex 4285
postgresql make 4114
postgresql m4 1642
postgresql Windows Module Definition 1152
postgresql XSLT 294
postgresql DOS Batch 92
postgresql Assembly 69
postgresql CSS 69
postgresql D 66
postgresql Windows Resource File 62
postgresql Lisp 16
postgresql sed 15
postgresql Python 13
postgresql Bourne Again Shell 10
postgresql Windows Message File 5
python Python 434015
python C 375555
python C/C++ Header 66942
python Bourne Shell 45091
python MSBuild script 38910
python m4 15559
python Assembly 12298
python make 2953
python HTML 2344
python Windows Module Definition 2081
python Objective-C 635
python Expect 565
python DOS Batch 506
python CSS 328
python Javascript 229
python Windows Resource File 207
python C++ 128
python vim script 106
python diff 105
python XML 74
python NAnt script 30
python Prolog 24
python Visual Basic 12
sqlite C 101454
sqlite C/C++ Header 1546
Cloc's default output is a text table with five columns:
language, file count, number of blank lines, number of comment
lines and number of code lines. The switches --by-file,
--3, and --by-percent generate additional information but
sometimes even those are insufficient.
The --sql option described in the previous section offers the
ability to create custom output. This section has a pair of examples
that show how to create custom columns.
The first example includes an extra column, Total, which is the
sum of the numbers of blank, comment, and code lines.
The second shows how to include the language name when running
with --by-file.
Example 1: Add a "Totals" column.
The first step is to run cloc and save the output to a relational database,
SQLite in this case:
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project x yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3.tar.gz | sqlite3 counts.db
Second, we craft an SQL query that returns the regular cloc output
plus an extra column for totals, then save the SQL statement to
a file, query_with_totals.sql:
-- file query_with_totals.sql
select Language, count(File) as files ,
sum(nBlank) as blank ,
sum(nComment) as comment ,
sum(nCode) as code ,
sum(nBlank)+sum(nComment)+sum(nCode) as Total
from t group by Language order by code desc;
Third, we run this query through SQLite using the counts.db database.
We'll include the -header switch so that SQLite prints the
column names:
The next section,
Wrapping cloc in other scripts,
shows one way these commands can be combined
into a new utility program.
Example 2: Include a column for "Language" when running with --by-file.
Output from --by-file omits each file's language to save screen real estate;
file paths for large projects can be long and including an extra 20 or so
characters for a Language column can be excessive.
As an example, here are the first few lines of output using the same
code base as in Example 1:
> cloc --by-file yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3.tar.gz
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.81 T=1.14 s (287.9 files/s, 221854.9 lines/s)
The absence of language identification for each file
is a bit disappointing, but
this can be remedied with a custom column solution.
The first step, creating a database, matches that from Example 1 so
we'll go straight to the second step of creating the desired
SQL query. We'll store this one in the file by_file_with_language.sql:
-- file by_file_with_language.sql
select File, Language, nBlank as blank ,
nComment as comment,
nCode as code
from t order by code desc;
Our desired extra column appears when we pass this custom SQL query
through our database:
More complex code counting solutions are possible by wrapping
cloc in scripts or programs. The "total lines" column from
example 1 of Custom Column Output
could be simplified to a single command with this shell script (on Linux):
#!/bin/sh
These commands must be in the user's $PATH:
cloc
sqlite3
sqlite_formatter
if test $# -eq 0 ; then
echo "Usage: $0 [cloc arguments]"
echo " Run cloc to count lines of code with an additional"
echo " output column for total lines (code+comment+blank)."
exit
fi
DBFILE=tempfile
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project x $@ | sqlite3 ${DBFILE}
SQL="select Language, count(File) as files ,
sum(nBlank) as blank ,
sum(nComment) as comment ,
sum(nCode) as code ,
sum(nBlank)+sum(nComment)+sum(nCode) as Total
from t group by Language order by code desc;
"
echo ${SQL} | sqlite3 -header ${DBFILE} | sqlite_formatter
rm ${DBFILE}
Saving the lines above to total_columns.sh and making it
executable (chmod +x total_columns.sh) would let us do
cloc versions before 1.50 by default computed, for the provided inputs, a
rough estimate of how many lines of code would be needed to write the
same code in a hypothetical third-generation computer language.
To produce this output one must now use the --3 switch.
cloc scale factor for language X = 3rd generation default gearing ratio / language X gearing ratio
For example, cloc 3rd generation scale factor for DOS Batch = 80 / 128 = 0.625.
The biggest flaw with this approach is that gearing ratios are defined
for logical lines of source code not physical lines (which cloc counts).
The values in cloc's 'scale' and '3rd gen. equiv.' columns should be
taken with a large grain of salt.
If you find yourself using the same command line switches every
time you invoke cloc, you can save some typing by adding those
switches to the options.txt runtime configuration file.
cloc will look for this file in the following default locations:
Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, macOS:
/home/USERNAME/.config/cloc/options.txt
Windows
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\cloc
If you run cloc with --help, cloc will tell you
where it expects to find this config file file. The information
appears by the explanation of the --config switch after
the text the default location of.
On Unix-like operating systems, this can be simplified to
> cloc --help | grep "default location"
the default location of /home/al/.config/cloc/options.txt.
and in a Windows cmd terminal with
> cloc --help | findstr default | findstr location
the default location of C:\Users\al\AppData\Roaming\cloc
Place each switch and arguments, if any, on a line by itself.
Lines prefixed with # symbol are ignored as comments and
blank lines are skipped. Leading hyphens on the switches are
optional. Here's a sample file:
options.txt
--vcs git
v # verbose level 1
exclude-ext svg,html
The path to the options.txt file can also be specified
with the --config FILE switch.
Finally, if cloc finds an options.txt file in the same
directory as files given by any of these switches (in the
listed priority), it will use that configuration file
from that location:
--list-file
--exclude-list-file
--read-lang-def
--force-lang-def
--diff-list-file
Run with --verbose to have cloc tell you which, if
any, options.txt file it uses.
cloc relies on the Regexp::Common module's regular expressions to remove
comments from source code. If comments are malformed, for example the
/* start comment marker appears in a C program without a corresponding */
marker, the regular expression engine could enter a recursive
loop, eventually triggering the warning
Complex regular subexpression recursion limit.
The most common cause for this warning is the existence of comment markers
in string literals. While language compilers and interpreters are smart
enough to recognize that "/*" (for example) is a string and not a comment,
cloc is fooled. File path globs, as in this line of JavaScript
var paths = globArray("**/*.js", {cwd: srcPath});
are frequent culprits.
In an attempt to overcome this problem, a different
algorithm which removes comment markers in strings can be enabled
with the --strip-str-comments switch. Doing so, however,
has drawbacks: cloc
will run more slowly and the output of --strip-comments
will contain strings that no longer match the input source.
Identifying comments within source code is trickier than one might expect.
Many languages would need a complete parser to be counted correctly.
cloc does not attempt to parse any of
the languages it aims to count and therefore is an imperfect tool.
The following are known problems:
Lines containing both source code and comments are counted as lines of code.
Comment markers within strings or
here-documents
are treated as actual comment markers and not string literals.
For example the following lines of C code
printf(" /* ");
for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
a += i;
}
printf(" */ ");
look to cloc like this:
printf(" xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx ");
where xxxxxxx represents cloc's view of commented text.
Therefore cloc counts the five lines as two lines of C code and three
lines of comments (lines with both code and comment are counted as code).
If you suspect your code has such strings, use the switch
--strip-str-comments to switch to the algorithm which removes
embedded comment markers. Its use will render the five lines above as
printf(" ");
for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
a += i;
}
printf(" ");
and therefore return a count of five lines of code.
See the
previous section
on drawbacks to using --strip-str-comments.
Embedded languages are not recognized. For example, an HTML file containing
JavaScript will be counted entirely as HTML.
Python docstrings can serve several purposes. They may
contain documentation,
comment out blocks of code, or they can be regular strings (when
they appear on the right hand side of an assignment or as a function argument).
cloc is unable to infer the meaning of docstrings by context; by default
cloc treats all docstrings as comments. The switch
--docstring-as-code
treats all docstrings as code.
Language definition files read with --read-lang-def or
--force-lang-def must be plain ASCII text files.
cloc treats compiler pragma's, for example #if / #endif, as code
even if these are used to block lines of source from being compiled;
the blocked lines still contribute to the code count.
On Windows, cloc will fail with Can't cd to ... No such file or
directory at /File/Find.pm if the code being scanned has
file paths longer than 255 characters. A work-around is to run cloc
from the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
cloc's comment match code uses regular expressions
which cannot properly account for nested comments using
the same comment markers (such as /* /* */ */).
XML comments embedded within CDATA blocks are counted as
comments rather than code.
If cloc does not recognize a language you are interested in counting,
create a GitHub issue
requesting support for your language. Include this information:
File extensions associated with the language. If the language does
not rely on file extensions and instead works with fixed file names or
with #! style program invocations, explain what those are.
A description of how comments are defined.
Links to sample code.
If the problem happens with the latest release, submit
a new issue at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issuesonly
if you can supply enough information for anyone reading the
issue report to reproduce the problem.
That means providing
the operating system you're running on
the cloc command with all options
the code you are counting (URL to a public git repo or zip file or
tar file, et cetera)
The last item is generally problematic. If the code base is
proprietary or amounts to more than a few dozen kilobytes,
you'll need to try to reconstruct similar inputs or demonstrate
the problem with an existing public code base.
Problem reports that cannot be reproduced will be ignored and
eventually closed.
Ismet Kursunoglu found errors with the MUMPS counter and provided
access to a computer with a large body of MUMPS code to test cloc.
Tod Huggins gave helpful suggestions for the Visual Basic filters.
Anton Demichev found a flaw with the JSP counter in cloc v0.76
and wrote the XML output generator for the --xml option.
Reuben Thomas pointed out that ISO C99 allows // as a comment
marker, provided code for the --no3 and --stdin-name
options, counting the m4 language,
and suggested several user-interface enhancements.
Michael Bello provided code for the --opt-match-f,
--opt-not-match-f,
--opt-match-d, and --opt-not-match-d
options.
Mahboob Hussain inspired the --original-dir and
--skip-uniqueness options, found a
bug in the duplicate file detection logic and improved the JSP filter.
Randy Sharo found and fixed an uninitialized variable bug for shell
scripts having only one line.
Steven Baker found and fixed a problem with the YAML output generator.
Greg Toth provided code to improve blank line detection in COBOL.
Joel Oliveira provided code to let --exclude-list-file handle
directory name exclusion.
Blazej Kroll provided code to produce an XSLT file, cloc-diff.xsl,
when producing XML output for the --diff option.
Denis Silakov enhanced the code which generates cloc.xsl when
using --by-file and --by-file-by-lang options, and
provided an XSL file that works with --diff output.
Andy (awalshe@sf.net) provided code to fix several bugs:
correct output of --counted
so that only files that are used in the code count appear and
that results are shown by language rather than file name;
allow --diff output from multiple runs to be summed
together with --sum-reports.
Jari Aalto created the initial version of cloc.1.pod and
maintains the Debian package for cloc.
Mikkel Christiansen (mikkels@gmail.com) provided counter definitions
for Clojure and ClojureScript.
