cloc
                                
                                
                                
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                        cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.
cloc
Count Lines of Code
cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.
Latest release: v1.94 (July 4, 2022)
cloc moved to GitHub in September 2015 after being hosted at http://cloc.sourceforge.net/ since August 2006.
- Quick Start
 - Overview
 - Download
- Install via package manager
 - Stable release
 - Development version
 
 - License
 - Why Use cloc?
 - Other Counters
 - Building a Windows Executable
 - Basic Use
 - Options
 - Recognized Languages
 - How it Works
 - Advanced Use
- Remove Comments from Source Code
 - Work with Compressed Archives
 - Differences
 - Create Custom Language Definitions
 - Combine Reports
 - SQL
 - Custom Column Output
 - Wrapping cloc in other scripts
 - git and UTF8 pathnames
 - Third Generation Language Scale Factors
 - options.txt configuration file
 
 - Complex regular subexpression recursion limit
 - Limitations
 - Requesting Support for Additional Languages
 - Reporting Problems
 - Citation
 - Acknowledgments
 - Copyright
 
Quick Start ▲
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-1.94.pl) or a Windows executable
(cloc-1.94.exe).  On this page, cloc is the generic term
used to refer to any of these.
a file
prompt> cloc hello.c
       1 text file.
       1 unique file.
       0 files ignored.
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=0.04 s (28.3 files/s, 340.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                                1              0              7              5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a directory
prompt> cloc gcc-5.2.0/gcc/c
      16 text files.
      15 unique files.
       3 files ignored.
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=0.23 s (57.1 files/s, 188914.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                               10           4680           6621          30812
C/C++ Header                     3             99            286            496
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            13           4779           6907          31308
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
an archive
We'll pull cloc's source zip file from GitHub, then count the contents:
prompt> wget https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/archive/master.zip prompt> cloc master.zip https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65 T=0.07 s (26.8 files/s, 141370.3 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perl 2 725 1103 8713 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 2 725 1103 8713 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a git repository, using a specific commit
This example uses code from PuDB, a fantastic Python debugger.
prompt> git clone http://git.tiker.net/trees/pudb.git
prompt> cd pudb
prompt> cloc 6be804e07a5db
      48 text files.
      48 unique files.
      15 files ignored.
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.73  T=0.15 s (223.1 files/s, 46159.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          28           1519            728           4659
YAML                             2              9              2             75
Bourne Shell                     3              6              0             17
make                             1              4              6             10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            34           1538            736           4761
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
each subdirectory of a particular directory
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)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          33           1226           1026           3017
C                                4            327            337            888
Markdown                         1             11              0             28
YAML                             1              0              2             12
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            39           1564           1365           3945
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
each subdirectory of a particular directory (Windows/cmd.exe)
for /D %I in (.\*) do cd %I && cloc --vcs git && cd ..
Overview ▲
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).
cloc contains code from David Wheeler's SLOCCount, Damian Conway and Abigail's Perl module Regexp::Common, Sean M. Burke's Perl module Win32::Autoglob, and Tye McQueen's Perl module Algorithm::Diff. Language scale factors were derived from Mayes Consulting, LLC web site http://softwareestimator.com/IndustryData2.htm.
New releases nominally appear every six months.
Run via docker
docker run --rm -v $PWD:/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
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
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.
Stable release
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/releases/latest
Development version
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/raw/master/cloc
License ▲
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.
Why Use cloc? ▲
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, 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.
 
Other Counters ▲
If cloc does not suit your needs here are other freely available counters to consider:
Other references:
- QSM's directory of code counting tools.
 - The Wikipedia entry for source code line counts.
 
Regexp::Common, Digest::MD5, Win32::Autoglob, Algorithm::Diff
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.
Building a Windows Executable ▲
The Windows downloads
cloc-1.94.exe,
cloc-1.92.exe,
cloc-1.90.exe and
cloc-1.88.exe were built on a 64 bit Windows 10 computer
using
Strawberry Perl
5.30.2 and
PAR::Packer
to build the .exe.
Release 1.86 was built on a 64 bit Windows 10 virtual machine downloaded from https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/; releases 1.74 through 1.84 were was built on a 32 bit Windows 7 virtual machine using Strawberry Perl 5.26.1.1, while 1.70 and 1.72 were built with Strawberry Perl 5.24.0.1 on an Amazon Web Services t2.micro instance running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (32 bit for 1.70 and 1.72; 64 bit for 1.74). Release 1.66 was built on a 32 bit Windows 7 VirtualBox image. Windows executables of cloc versions 1.60 and earlier were built with perl2exe on a 32 bit Windows XP computer. A small modification was made to the cloc source code before passing it to perl2exe; lines 87 and 88 were uncommented:
85 # Uncomment next two lines when building Windows executable with perl2exe 86 # or if running on a system that already has Regexp::Common. 87 #use Regexp::Common; 88 #$HAVE_Rexexp_Common = 1;
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:
cloc-1.94.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/b48a6002fb75fa66ec5d0c05a5c4d51f2ad22b5b025b7eb4e3945d18419c0952?nocache=1
cloc-1.92.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/2668fcf8609c431e8934fe9e1866bc620c58d198c4eb262f1d3ef31ef4a690f7
cloc-1.90.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/d655caae55486f9bac39f7e3c7b7553bcfcfe2b88914c79bfc328055f22b8a37/detection
cloc-1.88.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/97d5d2631d1cccdbfd99267ab8a4cf5968816bbe52c0f9324e72e768857f642d/detection
cloc-1.86.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/1b2e189df1834411b34534db446330d1c379b4bc008af3042ee9ade818c6a1c8/detection
cloc-1.84.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/e73d490c1e4ae2f50ee174005614029b4fa2610dcb76988714839d7be68479af/detection
cloc-1.82.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/2e5fb443fdefd776d7b6b136a25e5ee2048991e735042897dbd0bf92efb16563/detection
cloc-1.80.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/9e547b01c946aa818ffad43b9ebaf05d3da08ed6ca876ef2b6847be3bf1cf8be/detection
cloc-1.78.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/256ade3df82fa92febf2553853ed1106d96c604794606e86efd00d55664dd44f/detection
cloc-1.76.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/#/url/c1b9b9fe909f91429f95d41e9a9928ab7c58b21351b3acd4249def2a61acd39d/detection
cloc-1.74_x86.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/b73dece71f6d3199d90d55db53a588e1393c8dbf84231a7e1be2ce3c5a0ec75b/detection
cloc 1.72 exe: https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/8fd2af5cd972f648d7a2d7917bc202492012484c3a6f0b48c8fd60a8d395c98c/analysis/
cloc 1.70 exe: https://www.virustotal.com/en/url/63edef209099a93aa0be1a220dc7c4c7ed045064d801e6d5daa84ee624fc0b4a/analysis/
cloc 1.68 exe: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/c484fc58615fc3b0d5569b9063ec1532980281c3155e4a19099b11ef1c24443b/analysis/
cloc 1.66 exe: https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/54d6662e59b04be793dd10fa5e5edf7747cf0c0cc32f71eb67a3cf8e7a171d81/analysis/1453601367/
Why is the Windows executable so large?
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.
Create your own executable
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:
C:> cpan -i Digest::MD5 C:> cpan -i Regexp::Common C:> cpan -i Algorithm::Diff C:> cpan -i PAR::Packer C:> pp -M Digest::MD5 -c -x -o cloc-1.94.exe cloc-1.94.pl
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.
Basic Use ▲
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:
prompt> cloc perl-5.22.0.tar.gz
    5605 text files.
    5386 unique files.
    2176 files ignored.
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=25.49 s (134.7 files/s, 51980.3 lines/s)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                         files          blank        comment           code
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perl                              2892         136396         184362         536445
C                                  130          24676          33684         155648
C/C++ Header                       148           9766          16569         147858
Bourne Shell                       112           4044           6796          42668
Pascal                               8            458           1603           8592
XML                                 33            142              0           2410
YAML                                49             20             15           2078
C++                                 10            313            277           2033
make                                 4            426            488           1986
Prolog                              12            438              2           1146
JSON                                14              1              0           1037
yacc                                 1             85             76            998
Windows Message File                 1            102             11            489
DOS Batch                           14             92             41            389
Windows Resource File                3             10              0             85
D                                    1              5              7              8
Lisp                                 2              0              3              4
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                              3434         176974         243934         903874
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
See also https://github.com/jmensch1/codeflower for a graphical rendering of cloc results.
Options ▲
prompt> cloc --help
Usage: cloc [options] <file(s)/dir(s)/git hash(es)> | <set 1> <set 2> | <report files>
 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.
   --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
   --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 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>.
   --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.
   --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.
Recognized Languages ▲
prompt> cloc --show-lang ABAP (abap) ActionScript (as) Ada (ada, adb, ads, pad) ADSO/IDSM (adso) Agda (agda, lagda) AMPLE (ample, dofile, startup) Ant (build.xml, build.xml) ANTLR Grammar (g, g4) Apex Class (cls) Apex Trigger (trigger) APL (apl, apla, aplc, aplf, apli, apln, aplo, dyalog, dyapp, mipage) Arduino Sketch (ino, pde) AsciiDoc (adoc, asciidoc) ASP (asa, ashx, asp, axd) ASP.NET (asax, ascx, asmx, aspx, master, sitemap, webinfo) AspectJ (aj) Assembly (a51, asm, nasm, S, s) AutoHotkey (ahk, ahkl) awk (auk, awk, gawk, mawk, nawk) Bazel (BUILD) BizTalk Orchestration (odx) BizTalk Pipeline (btp) Blade (blade, blade.php) Bourne Again Shell (bash) Bourne Shell (sh) BrightScript (brs) builder (xml.builder) C (c, cats, ec, idc, pgc) C Shell (csh, tcsh) C# (cs) C# Designer (designer.cs) C++ (C, c++, cc, CPP, cpp, cxx, h++, inl, ipp, pcc, tcc, tpp) C/C++ Header (H, h, hh, hpp, hxx) Cake Build Script (cake) CCS (ccs) Chapel (chpl) Clean (dcl, icl) Clojure (boot, cl2, clj, cljs.hl, cljscm, cljx, hic, riemann.config) ClojureC (cljc) ClojureScript (cljs) CMake (cmake, cmake.in, CMakeLists.txt) COBOL (CBL, cbl, ccp, COB, cob, cobol, cpy) CoffeeScript (_coffee, cakefile, cjsx, coffee, iced) ColdFusion (cfm, cfml) ColdFusion CFScript (cfc) Coq (v) Crystal (cr) CSON (cson) CSS (css) CSV (csv) Cucumber (feature) CUDA (cu, cuh) Cython (pxd, pxi, pyx) D (d) DAL (da) Dart (dart) Delphi Form (dfm) DenizenScript (dsc) Derw (derw) dhall (dhall) DIET (dt) diff (diff, patch) DITA (dita) Dockerfile (Dockerfile, dockerfile) DOORS Extension Language (dxl) DOS Batch (BAT, bat, BTM, btm, CMD, cmd) Drools (drl) DTD (dtd) dtrace (d) ECPP (ecpp) EEx (eex) EJS (ejs) Elixir (ex, exs) Elm (elm) Embedded Crystal (ecr) ERB (ERB, erb) Erlang (app.src, emakefile, erl, hrl, rebar.config, rebar.config.lock, rebar.lock, xrl, yrl) Expect (exp) F# (fsi, fs, fs) F# Script (fsx) Fennel (fnl) Finite State Language (fsl, jssm) Fish Shell (fish) Flatbuffers (fbs) Focus (focexec) Forth (4th, e4, f83, fb, forth, fpm, fr, frt, ft, fth, rx, fs, f, for) Fortran 77 (F, F77, f77, FOR, FTN, ftn, pfo, f, for) Fortran 90 (F90, f90) Fortran 95 (F95, f95) Freemarker Template (ftl) Futhark (fut) FXML (fxml) GDScript (gd) Gencat NLS (msg) Glade (glade, ui) Gleam (gleam) GLSL (comp, fp, frag, frg, fsh, fshader, geo, geom, glsl, glslv, gshader, tesc, tese, vert, vrx, vsh, vshader) Go (go) Godot Resource (tres) Godot Scene (tscn) Godot Shaders (gdshader) Gradle (gradle, gradle.kts) Grails (gsp) GraphQL (gql, graphql, graphqls) Groovy (gant, groovy, grt, gtpl, gvy, jenkinsfile) Haml (haml, haml.deface) Handlebars (handlebars, hbs) Harbour (hb) Haskell (hs, hsc, lhs) Haxe (hx, hxsl) HCL (hcl, nomad, tf, tfvars) HLSL (cg, cginc, fxh, hlsl, hlsli, shader) Hoon (hoon) HTML (htm, html, html.hl, xht) HTML EEx (heex) IDL (dlm, idl, pro) Idris (idr) Igor Pro (ipf) Imba (imba) INI (buildozer.spec, ini, lektorproject, prefs) InstallShield (ism) IPL (ipl) Java (java) JavaScript (_js, bones, cjs, es6, jake, jakefile, js, jsb, jscad, jsfl, jsm, jss, mjs, njs, pac, sjs, ssjs, xsjs, xsjslib) JavaServer Faces (jsf) JCL (jcl) Jinja Template (jinja, jinja2) JSON (arcconfig, avsc, composer.lock, geojson, gltf, har, htmlhintrc, json, json-tmlanguage, jsonl, mcmeta, mcmod.info, tern-config, tern-project, tfstate, tfstate.backup, topojson, watchmanconfig, webapp, webmanifest, yyp) JSON5 (json5) JSP (jsp, jspf) JSX (jsx) Julia (jl) Juniper Junos (junos) Jupyter Notebook (ipynb) kvlang (kv) Kermit (ksc) Korn Shell (ksh) Kotlin (kt, ktm, kts) Lean (hlean, lean) Lem (lem) LESS (less) lex (l, lex) LFE (lfe) liquid (liquid) Lisp (asd, el, lisp, lsp, cl, jl) Literate Idris (lidr) LiveLink OScript (oscript) LLVM IR (ll) Logos (x, xm) Logtalk (lgt, logtalk) Lua (lua, nse, p8, pd_lua, rbxs, wlua) m4 (ac, m4) make (am, Gnumakefile, gnumakefile, Makefile, makefile, mk) Mako (mako, mao) Markdown (contents.lr, markdown, md, mdown, mdwn, mdx, mkd, mkdn, mkdown, ronn, workbook) Mathematica (cdf, ma, mathematica, mt, nbp, wl, wlt, m) MATLAB (m) Maven (pom, pom.xml) Meson (meson.build) Metal (metal) Modula3 (i3, ig, m3, mg) Mojo (mojom) MSBuild script (btproj, csproj, msbuild, vcproj, wdproj, wixproj) MUMPS (mps, m) Mustache (mustache) MXML (mxml) NAnt script (build) NASTRAN DMAP (dmap) Nemerle (n) Nim (nim, nim.cfg, nimble, nimrod, nims) Nix (nix) Objective-C (m) Objective-C++ (mm) OCaml (eliom, eliomi, ml, ml4, mli, mll, mly) Odin (odin) OpenCL (cl) Oracle Forms (fmt) Oracle PL/SQL (bod, fnc, prc, spc, trg) Oracle Reports (rex) Pascal (dpr, lpr, p, pas, pascal) Pascal/Puppet (pp) Patran Command Language (pcl, ses) PEG (peg) peg.js (pegjs) peggy (peggy) Perl (ack, al, cpanfile, makefile.pl, perl, ph, plh, plx, pm, psgi, rexfile, pl, p6) PHP (aw, ctp, phakefile, php, php3, php4, php5, php_cs, php_cs.dist, phps, phpt, phtml) PHP/Pascal (inc) Pig Latin (pig) PL/I (pl1) PL/M (lit, plm) PlantUML (puml) PO File (po) PowerBuilder (pbt, sra, srf, srm, srs, sru, srw) PowerShell (ps1, psd1, psm1) ProGuard (pro) Prolog (P, prolog, yap, pl, p6, pro) Properties (properties) Protocol Buffers (proto) Pug (jade, pug) PureScript (purs) Python (buck, build.bazel, gclient, gyp, gypi, lmi, py, py3, pyde, pyi, pyp, pyt, pyw, sconscript, sconstruct, snakefile, tac, workspace, wscript, wsgi, xpy) QML (qbs, qml) Qt (ui) Qt Linguist (ts) Qt Project (pro) R (expr-dist, R, r, rd, rprofile, rsx) Racket (rkt, rktd, rktl, scrbl) Raku (pm6, raku, rakumod) Raku/Prolog (P6, p6) RAML (raml) RapydScript (pyj) Razor (cshtml, razor) ReasonML (re, rei) ReScript (res, resi) reStructuredText (rest, rest.txt, rst, rst.txt) Rexx (pprx, rexx) Ring (rform, rh, ring) Rmd (Rmd) RobotFramework (robot) Ruby (appraisals, berksfile, brewfile, builder, buildfile, capfile, dangerfile, deliverfile, eye, fastfile, gemfile, gemfile.lock, gemspec, god, guardfile, irbrc, jarfile, jbuilder, mavenfile, mspec, podfile, podspec, pryrc, puppetfile, rabl, rake, rb, rbuild, rbw, rbx, ru, snapfile, thor, thorfile, vagrantfile, watchr) Ruby HTML (rhtml) Rust (rs, rs.in) SaltStack (sls) SAS (sas) Sass (sass) Scala (kojo, sbt, scala) Scheme (sc, sch, scm, sld, sps, ss, sls) SCSS (scss) sed (sed) SKILL (il) SKILL++ (ils) Slice (ice) Slim (slim) Smalltalk (st, cs) Smarty (smarty, tpl) Softbridge Basic (SBL, sbl) Solidity (sol) SparForte (sp) Specman e (e) SQL (cql, mysql, psql, SQL, sql, tab, udf, viw) SQL Data (data.sql) SQL Stored Procedure (spc.sql, spoc.sql, sproc.sql, udf.sql) Squirrel (nut) Standard ML (fun, sig, sml) Starlark (bazel, bzl) Stata (ado, DO, do, doh, ihlp, mata, matah, sthlp) Stylus (styl) SugarSS (sss) Svelte (svelte) SVG (SVG, svg) Swift (swift) SWIG (i) TableGen (td) Tcl/Tk (itk, tcl, tk) Teamcenter met (met) Teamcenter mth (mth) TeX (aux, bbx, bib, bst, cbx, dtx, ins, lbx, ltx, mkii, mkiv, mkvi, sty, tex, cls) Text (text, txt) Thrift (thrift) TITAN Project File Information (tpd) Titanium Style Sheet (tss) TNSDL (cii, cin, in1, in2, in3, in4, inf, interface, rou, sdl, sdt, spd, ssc, sst) TOML (toml) tspeg (jspeg, tspeg) TTCN (ttcn, ttcn2, ttcn3, ttcnpp) Twig (twig) TypeScript (tsx, ts) Umka (um) Unity-Prefab (mat, prefab) Vala (vala) Vala Header (vapi) VB for Applications (VBA, vba) Velocity Template Language (vm) Verilog-SystemVerilog (sv, svh, v) VHDL (VHD, vhd, VHDL, vhdl, vhf, vhi, vho, vhs, vht, vhw) vim script (vim) Visual Basic (BAS, bas, ctl, dsr, frm, FRX, frx, VBHTML, vbhtml, vbp, vbw, cls) Visual Basic .NET (VB, vb, vbproj) Visual Basic Script (VBS, vbs) Visual Fox Pro (SCA, sca) Visual Studio Module (ixx) Visual Studio Solution (sln) Visualforce Component (component) Visualforce Page (page) Vuejs Component (vue) Web Services Description (wsdl) WebAssembly (wast, wat) Windows Message File (mc) Windows Module Definition (def) Windows Resource File (rc, rc2) WiX include (wxi) WiX source (wxs) WiX string localization (wxl) WXML (wxml) WXSS (wxss) X++ (xpo) XAML (xaml) xBase (prg, prw) xBase Header (ch) XHTML (xhtml) XMI (XMI, xmi) XML (adml, admx, ant, app.config, axml, builds, ccproj, ccxml, classpath, clixml, cproject, cscfg, csdef, csl, ct, depproj, ditamap, ditaval, dll.config, dotsettings, filters, fsproj, gmx, grxml, iml, ivy, jelly, jsproj, kml, launch, mdpolicy, mjml, natvis, ndproj, nproj, nuget.config, nuspec, odd, osm, packages.config, pkgproj, plist, proj, project, props, ps1xml, psc1, pt, rdf, resx, rss, scxml, settings.stylecop, sfproj, shproj, srdf, storyboard, sttheme, sublime-snippet, targets, tmcommand, tml, tmlanguage, tmpreferences, tmsnippet, tmtheme, urdf, ux, vcxproj, vsixmanifest, vssettings, vstemplate, vxml, web.config, web.debug.config, web.release.config, wsf, x3d, xacro, xib, xlf, xliff, XML, xml, xml.dist, xproj, xspec, xul, zcml) XQuery (xq, xql, xqm, xquery, xqy) XSD (XSD, xsd) XSLT (XSL, xsl, XSLT, xslt) Xtend (xtend) yacc (y, yacc) YAML (clang-format, clang-tidy, gemrc, glide.lock, mir, reek, rviz, sublime-syntax, syntax, yaml, yaml-tmlanguage, yml, yml.mysql) Zig (zig) zsh (zsh)
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:
clfiles could be Lisp or OpenCLclsfiles could be Visual Basic, TeX or Apex Classcsfiles could be C# or Smalltalkdfiles could be D or dtraceffiles could be Fortran 77 or Forthfncfiles could be Oracle PL or SQLforfiles could be Fortran 77 or Forthfsfiles could be F# or Forthincfiles could be PHP or Pascalitkfiles could be Tcl or Tkjlfiles could be Lisp or Julialitfiles could be PL or Mmfiles could be MATLAB, Mathematica, Objective-C, MUMPS or Mercuryp6files could be Perl or Prologplfiles could be Perl or PrologPLfiles could be Perl or Prologppfiles could be Pascal or Puppetprofiles could be IDL, Qt Project, Prolog or ProGuardtsfiles could be TypeScript or Qt Linguistuifiles could be Qt or Gladevfiles 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.
 
How It Works ▲
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-uniquenessswitch 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-langand--show-extoptions). Files which match are classified as containing source code for that language. Each file without an extensions 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.
 
Advanced Use ▲
Remove Comments from Source Code ▲
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.
http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.03  T=1.0 s (1.0 files/s, 82895.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
First, the original source file:
prompt> gcc -c sqlite3.c prompt> md5sum sqlite3.o cce5f1a2ea27c7e44b2e1047e2588b49 sqlite3.o
Next, the version without comments:
prompt> mv sqlite3.c.nc sqlite3.c prompt> gcc -c sqlite3.c prompt> md5sum sqlite3.o cce5f1a2ea27c7e44b2e1047e2588b49 sqlite3.o
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.
Work with Compressed Archives ▲
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 
--extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\wzunzip\" -e -o >FILE< ."
Ref. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloc/forums/forum/600963/topic/4021070?message=8938196
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
cloc --extract-with='tar zxf >FILE<' perl-5.8.5.tar.gz Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
On a Windows computer with WinZip installed in
c:\Program Files\WinZip the command would look like
cloc.exe --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe\" -e -o >FILE< ." perl-5.8.5.tar.gz Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
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:
Unix> cloc --extract-with="unzip -d . >FILE< " Project.ear DOS> cloc.exe --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe\" -e -o >FILE< ." Project.ear
Differences ▲
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
cloc --diff-alignment=align.txt gcc-4.4.0.tar.bz2 gcc-4.5.0.tar.bz2
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.
4 errors:
Diff error, exceeded timeout:  /tmp/8ToGAnB9Y1/Python-2.7.9/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c
Diff error, exceeded timeout:  /tmp/M6ldvsGaoq/Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c
Diff error (quoted comments?):  /tmp/8ToGAnB9Y1/Python-2.7.9/Mac/Modules/qd/qdsupport.py
Diff error (quoted comments?):  /tmp/M6ldvsGaoq/Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qd/qdsupport.py
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=298.59 s (0.0 files/s, 0.0 lines/s)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                   files          blank        comment           code
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Visual Basic
 same                          2              0              1             12
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
make
 same                         11              0            340           2952
 modified                      1              0              0              1
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
diff
 same                          1              0             87            105
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
CSS
 same                          0              0             19            327
 modified                      1              0              0              1
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Objective-C
 same                          7              0             61            635
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
NAnt script
 same                          2              0              0             30
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
XML
 same                          3              0              2             72
 modified                      1              0              0              1
 added                         0              0              0              1
 removed                       0              1              0              0
Windows Resource File
 same                          3              0             56            206
 modified                      1              0              0              1
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Expect
 same                          6              0            161            565
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
HTML
 same                         14              0             11           2344
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
vim script
 same                          1              0              7            106
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
C++
 same                          2              0             18            128
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Windows Module Definition
 same                          7              0            187           2080
 modified                      2              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              1
 removed                       0              1              0              2
Prolog
 same                          1              0              0             24
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Javascript
 same                          3              0             49            229
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Assembly
 same                         51              0           6794          12298
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Bourne Shell
 same                         41              0           7698          45024
 modified                      1              0              0              3
 added                         0             13              2             64
 removed                       0              0              0              0
DOS Batch
 same                         29              0            107            494
 modified                      1              0              0              9
 added                         0              1              0              3
 removed                       0              0              0              0
MSBuild script
 same                         77              0              3          38910
 modified                      0              0              0              0
 added                         0              0              0              0
 removed                       0              0              0              0
Python
 same                       1947              0         109012         430335
 modified                    192              0             94            950
 added                         2            323            283           2532
 removed                       2             55             58            646
m4
 same                         18              0            191          15352
 modified                      1              0              0              2
 added                         1             31              0            205
 removed                       0              0              0              0
C
 same                        505              0          37439         347837
 modified                     45              0             13            218
 added                         0             90             33            795
 removed                       0              9              2            148
C/C++ Header
 same                        255              0          10361          66635
 modified                      5              0              5              7
 added                         0              1              3            300
 removed                       0              0              0              0
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:
 same                       2986              0         172604         966700
 modified                    251              0            112           1193
 added                         3            459            321           3901
 removed                       2             66             60            796
---------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Create Custom Language Definitions ▲
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.
Combine Reports ▲
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 MariaDB team does
cloc --out mariadb-10.1.txt mariadb-server-10.1.zip
and provides you with the file mariadb-10.1.txt.
The contents of the three files you get are
Unix> cat mariadb-10.1.txt https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65 T=45.36 s (110.5 files/s, 66411.4 lines/s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C++ 1613 225338 290077 983026 C 853 62442 73017 715018 C/C++ Header 1327 48300 114577 209394 Bourne Shell 256 10224 10810 61943 Perl 147 10342 8305 35562 Pascal 107 4907 5237 32541 HTML 56 195 6 16489 Javascript 5 3309 3019 15540 m4 30 1599 359 14215 CMake 190 1919 4097 12206 XML 35 648 56 5210 Ruby 59 619 184 4998 Puppet 10 0 1 3848 make 134 724 360 3631 SQL 23 306 377 3405 Python 34 371 122 2545 Bourne Again Shell 27 299 380 1604 Windows Module Definition 37 27 13 1211 lex 4 394 166 991 yacc 2 152 64 810 DOS Batch 19 89 82 700 Prolog 1 9 40 448 RobotFramework 1 0 0 441 CSS 2 33 155 393 JSON 5 0 0 359 dtrace 9 59 179 306 Windows Resource File 10 61 89 250 Assembly 2 70 284 237 WiX source 1 18 10 155 Visual Basic 6 0 0 88 YAML 2 4 4 65 PHP 1 11 2 24 SKILL 1 8 15 16 sed 2 0 0 16 Windows Message File 1 2 8 6 diff 1 1 4 4 D 1 4 11 4 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 5014 372484 512110 2127699 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unix> cat sqlite-3081101.txt https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65 T=1.22 s (3.3 files/s, 143783.6 lines/s) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 2 11059 53924 101454 C/C++ Header 2 211 6630 1546 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 4 11270 60554 103000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unix> cat postgresql-9.4.4.txt https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65 T=22.46 s (172.0 files/s, 96721.6 lines/s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HTML 1254 3725 0 785991 C 1139 139289 244045 736519 C/C++ Header 667 12277 32488 57014 SQL 410 13400 8745 51926 yacc 8 3163 2669 28491 Bourne Shell 41 2647 2440 17170 Perl 81 1702 1308 9456 lex 9 792 1631 4285 make 205 1525 1554 4114 m4 12 218 25 1642 Windows Module Definition 13 4 17 1152 XSLT 5 76 55 294 DOS Batch 7 29 30 92 CSS 1 20 7 69 Assembly 3 17 38 69 D 1 14 14 66 Windows Resource File 3 4 0 62 Lisp 1 1 1 16 sed 1 1 7 15 Python 1 5 0 13 Bourne Again Shell 1 8 6 10 Windows Message File 1 0 0 5 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 3864 178917 295080 1698471 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 1994 212790 370986 1552991 C++ 1613 225338 290077 983026 HTML 1310 3920 6 802480 C/C++ Header 1996 60788 153695 267954 Bourne Shell 297 12871 13250 79113 SQL 433 13706 9122 55331 Perl 228 12044 9613 45018 Pascal 107 4907 5237 32541 yacc 10 3315 2733 29301 m4 42 1817 384 15857 Javascript 5 3309 3019 15540 CMake 190 1919 4097 12206 make 339 2249 1914 7745 lex 13 1186 1797 5276 XML 35 648 56 5210 Ruby 59 619 184 4998 Puppet 10 0 1 3848 Python 35 376 122 2558 Windows Module Definition 50 31 30 2363 Bourne Again Shell 28 307 386 1614 DOS Batch 26 118 112 792 CSS 3 53 162 462 Prolog 1 9 40 448 RobotFramework 1 0 0 441 JSON 5 0 0 359 Windows Resource File 13 65 89 312 Assembly 5 87 322 306 dtrace 9 59 179 306 XSLT 5 76 55 294 WiX source 1 18 10 155 Visual Basic 6 0 0 88 D 2 18 25 70 YAML 2 4 4 65 sed 3 1 7 31 PHP 1 11 2 24 SKILL 1 8 15 16 Lisp 1 1 1 16 Windows Message File 2 2 8 11 diff 1 1 4 4 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 8882 562671 867744 3929170 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unix> cat databases.file ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- File files blank comment code ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- mariadb-10.1.txt 5014 372484 512110 2127699 postgresql-9.4.4.txt 3864 178917 295080 1698471 sqlite-3081101.txt 4 11270 60554 103000 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 8882 562671 867744 3929170 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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:
cloc --out perl-5.22.0.txt perl-5.22.0.tar.gz cloc --out python-2.7.10.txt Python-2.7.10.tar.xz
then sum these together with
Unix> cloc --sum-reports --out script_lang perl-5.22.0.txt python-2.7.10.txt Wrote script_lang.lang Wrote script_lang.file Unix> cat script_lang.lang https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Perl 2892 136396 184362 536445 C 680 75566 71211 531203 Python 2141 89642 109524 434015 C/C++ Header 408 16433 26938 214800 Bourne Shell 154 11088 14496 87759 MSBuild script 77 0 3 38910 m4 20 1604 191 15559 Assembly 51 3775 6794 12298 Pascal 8 458 1603 8592 make 16 897 828 4939 XML 37 198 2 2484 HTML 14 393 11 2344 C++ 12 338 295 2161 Windows Module Definition 9 171 187 2081 YAML 49 20 15 2078 Prolog 12 438 2 1146 JSON 14 1 0 1037 yacc 1 85 76 998 DOS Batch 44 199 148 895 Objective-C 7 98 61 635 Expect 6 104 161 565 Windows Message File 1 102 11 489 CSS 1 98 19 328 Windows Resource File 7 55 56 292 Javascript 3 31 49 229 vim script 1 36 7 106 diff 1 17 87 105 NAnt script 2 1 0 30 IDL 1 0 0 24 Visual Basic 2 1 1 12 D 1 5 7 8 Lisp 2 0 3 4 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 6674 338250 417148 1902571 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unix> cat script_lang.file ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- File files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- python-2.7.10.txt 3240 161276 173214 998697 perl-5.22.0.txt 3434 176974 243934 903874 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 6674 338250 417148 1902571 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, combine the combination files:
Unix> cloc --sum-reports --report_file=everything databases.lang script_lang.lang Wrote everything.lang Wrote everything.file Unix> cat everything.lang https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 2674 288356 442197 2084194 C++ 1625 225676 290372 985187 HTML 1324 4313 17 804824 Perl 3120 148440 193975 581463 C/C++ Header 2404 77221 180633 482754 Python 2176 90018 109646 436573 Bourne Shell 451 23959 27746 166872 SQL 433 13706 9122 55331 Pascal 115 5365 6840 41133 MSBuild script 77 0 3 38910 m4 62 3421 575 31416 yacc 11 3400 2809 30299 Javascript 8 3340 3068 15769 make 355 3146 2742 12684 Assembly 56 3862 7116 12604 CMake 190 1919 4097 12206 XML 72 846 58 7694 lex 13 1186 1797 5276 Ruby 59 619 184 4998 Windows Module Definition 59 202 217 4444 Puppet 10 0 1 3848 YAML 51 24 19 2143 DOS Batch 70 317 260 1687 Bourne Again Shell 28 307 386 1614 Prolog 13 447 42 1594 JSON 19 1 0 1396 CSS 4 151 181 790 Objective-C 7 98 61 635 Windows Resource File 20 120 145 604 Expect 6 104 161 565 Windows Message File 3 104 19 500 RobotFramework 1 0 0 441 dtrace 9 59 179 306 XSLT 5 76 55 294 WiX source 1 18 10 155 diff 2 18 91 109 vim script 1 36 7 106 Visual Basic 8 1 1 100 D 3 23 32 78 sed 3 1 7 31 NAnt script 2 1 0 30 IDL 1 0 0 24 PHP 1 11 2 24 Lisp 3 1 4 20 SKILL 1 8 15 16 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 15556 900921 1284892 5831741 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unix> cat everything.file ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- File files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- databases.lang 8882 562671 867744 3929170 script_lang.lang 6674 338250 417148 1902571 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 15556 900921 1284892 5831741 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
SQL ▲
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 | 
|---|---|
| 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 | 
The metadata table contains information about when the cloc run
was made.  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.
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:
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project mariadb mariadb-server-10.1.zip | sqlite3 code.db
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:
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project postgresql --sql-append postgresql-9.4.4.tar.bz2 | sqlite3 code.db cloc --sql 1 --sql-project sqlite --sql-append sqlite-amalgamation-3081101.zip | sqlite3 code.db cloc --sql 1 --sql-project python --sql-append Python-2.7.10.tar.xz | sqlite3 code.db cloc --sql 1 --sql-project perl --sql-append perl-5.22.0.tar.gz | sqlite3 code.db
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)'
sqlite|sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c|161623
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
  _______ _____________________________________ ______
  sqlite  sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c 161623
  
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
Project File                                  nL
_______ _____________________________________ ______
sqlite  sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c 161623
What is the longest file in each project?
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) as nL from t
                          group by project order by nL;' | sqlite_formatter
Project    File                                                             nL
__________ ________________________________________________________________ ______
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c                          28091
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/preproc.c            54623
mariadb    server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/nfkc.c             80246
perl       perl-5.22.0/cpan/Locale-Codes/lib/Locale/Codes/Language_Codes.pm 100747
sqlite     sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c                            161623
Which files in each project have the most code lines?
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,max(nCode) as nL from t
                         group by project order by nL desc;' | sqlite_formatter
Project    File                                                             nL
__________ ________________________________________________________________ ______
perl       perl-5.22.0/cpan/Locale-Codes/lib/Locale/Codes/Language_Codes.pm 100735
sqlite     sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c                             97469
mariadb    server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/nfkc.c             80221
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/preproc.c            45297
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c                          26705
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 
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
Project File                                                                 nCode
_______ ____________________________________________________________________ _____
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/ja.pl                 1938
python  Python-2.7.10/PCbuild/pythoncore.vcproj                               1889
python  Python-2.7.10/PC/VS8.0/pythoncore.vcproj                              1889
mariadb server-10.1/mysql-test/extra/binlog_tests/mysqlbinlog_row_engine.inc  1862
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/zh_strk.pl            1589
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/zh_zhu.pl             1563
mariadb server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/configure.ac               1526
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/zh_pin.pl             1505
mariadb server-10.1/mysql-test/suite/funcs_1/storedproc/storedproc_02.inc     1465
python  Python-2.7.10/PC/VS8.0/_bsddb.vcproj                                  1463
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
 
Custom Column Output ▲
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
(the tar file comes from the
YAML-C++ project).
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:
> cat query_with_totals.sql | sqlite3 -header counts.db
Language|files|blank|comment|code|Total
C++|141|12786|17359|60378|90523
C/C++ Header|110|8566|17420|51502|77488
Bourne Shell|10|6351|6779|38264|51394
m4|11|2037|260|17980|20277
Python|30|1613|2486|4602|8701
MSBuild script|11|0|0|1711|1711
CMake|7|155|285|606|1046
make|5|127|173|464|764
Markdown|2|30|0|39|69
The extra column for Total is there but the format is unappealing.
Running the output through sqlite_formatter yields the desired result:
> cat query_with_totals.sql | sqlite3 -header counts.db | sqlite_formatter
Language       files blank comment code  Total
______________ _____ _____ _______ _____ _____
C++              141 12786   17359 60378 90523
C/C++ Header     110  8566   17420 51502 77488
Bourne Shell      10  6351    6779 38264 51394
m4                11  2037     260 17980 20277
Python            30  1613    2486  4602  8701
MSBuild script    11     0       0  1711  1711
CMake              7   155     285   606  1046
make               5   127     173   464   764
Markdown           2    30       0    39    69
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)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File                                                                                                     blank        comment           code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/configure                                                        2580           2264          13691
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/configure                                                  2541           2235          13446
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest.h                                    1972           4681          13408
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock/gmock.h                                          1585           3397           9216
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/integration/gen_emitter_test.cpp                                              999              0           8760
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/aclocal.m4                                                        987            100           8712
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/m4/libtool.m4                                               760             65           7176
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/build-aux/ltmain.sh                                         959           1533           7169
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock-gtest-all.cc                                     1514           3539           6390
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest-all.cc                               1312           2896           5384
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/test/gtest_unittest.cc                                     1226           1091           5098
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/include/gtest/internal/gtest-param-util-generated.h         349            235           4559
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:
> cat by_file_with_language.sql | sqlite3 -header counts.db | sqlite_formatter
File                                                                                               Language       blank comment code
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________ _____ _______ _____
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/configure                                                 Bourne Shell    2580    2264 13691
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/configure                                           Bourne Shell    2541    2235 13446
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest.h                             C/C++ Header    1972    4681 13408
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock/gmock.h                                   C/C++ Header    1585    3397  9216
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/integration/gen_emitter_test.cpp                                      C++              999       0  8760
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/aclocal.m4                                                m4               987     100  8712
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/m4/libtool.m4                                       m4               760      65  7176
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/build-aux/ltmain.sh                                 Bourne Shell     959    1533  7169
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock-gtest-all.cc                              C++             1514    3539  6390
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest-all.cc                        C++             1312    2896  5384
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/test/gtest_unittest.cc                              C++             1226    1091  5098
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/include/gtest/internal/gtest-param-util-generated.h C/C++ Header     349     235  4559
 
*   
Wrapping cloc in other scripts ▲
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
./total_columns.sh yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3.tar.gz
to directly get
Language       files blank comment code  Total
______________ _____ _____ _______ _____ _____
C++              141 12786   17359 60378 90523
C/C++ Header     110  8566   17420 51502 77488
Bourne Shell      10  6351    6779 38264 51394
m4                11  2037     260 17980 20277
Python            30  1613    2486  4602  8701
MSBuild script    11     0       0  1711  1711
CMake              7   155     285   606  1046
make               5   127     173   464   764
Markdown           2    30       0    39    69
Other examples:
- Count code from a specific branch of a web-hosted git repository and send the results as a .csv email attachment: https://github.com/dannyloweatx/checkmarx
 
git and UTF8 pathnames ▲
cloc's --git option may fail if you work with directory or
file names with UTF-8 characters (for example, see
issue 457).
The solution,
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22827239/how-to-make-git-properly-display-utf-8-encoded-pathnames-in-the-console-window,
is to apply this git configuration command:
git config --global core.quotepath off
Your console's font will need to be capable of displaying Unicode characters.
Third Generation Language Scale Factors ▲
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.
Scale factors were derived from the 2006 version of language gearing ratios listed at Mayes Consulting web site, http://softwareestimator.com/IndustryData2.htm, using this equation:
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.
options.txt configuration file ▲
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\cloc\options.txt
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.
Complex regular subexpression recursion limit ▲
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.
Limitations ▲
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 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-commentsto switch to the algorithm which removes embedded comment markers. Its use will render the five lines above asprintf(" "); for (i = 0; iand 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 /* /* */ */).
 
Requesting Support for Additional Languages ▲
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.
 
Reporting Problems ▲
If you encounter a problem with cloc, first check to see if you're running with the latest version of the tool:
cloc --version
If the version is older than the most recent release at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/releases, download the latest version and see if it solves your problem.
If the problem happens with the latest release, submit a new issue at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues only 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)
 
Problem reports that cannot be reproduced will be ignored and eventually closed.
Citation ▲
Please use the following bibtex entry to cite cloc in a publication:
@software{adanial_cloc,
  author       = {Albert Danial},
  title        = {cloc: v1.92},
  month        = dec,
  year         = 2021,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v1.92},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.5760077},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5760077}
}
(Update the version number and corresponding year if this entry is outdated.)
Acknowledgments ▲
Wolfram Rösler provided most of the code examples in the test suite. These examples come from his Hello World collection.
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 ([email protected]) 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 ([email protected]) provided counter definitions for Clojure and ClojureScript.
Vera Djuraskovic from Webhostinggeeks.com provided the Serbo-Croatian translation.
Gill Ajoft of Ajoft Softwares provided the Bulgarian translation.
The Knowledge Team provided the Slovakian translation.
Erik Gooven Arellano Casillas provided an update to the MXML counter to recognize ActionScript comments.
Gianluca Casati created the cloc CPAN package.
Ryan Lindeman implemented the --by-percent feature.
Kent C. Dodds, @kentcdodds, created and maintains the npm package of cloc.
Viktoria Parnak provided the Ukrainian translation.
Natalie Harmann provided the Belarussian translation.
Nithyal at Healthcare Administration Portal provided the Tamil translation.
Patricia Motosan provided the Romanian translation.
Gajk Melikyan provided the provided the Armenian translation for http://studybay.com.
Hungarian translation courtesy of Zsolt Boros.
Sietse Snel implemented the parallel processing capability available with the --processes=N switch.
The development of cloc was partially funded by the Northrop Grumman Corporation.
Copyright ▲
Copyright (c) 2006-2018, Al Danial