Count Lines of Code
cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.
Hosted at http://cloc.sourceforge.net/ since August 2006, cloc began the transition to GitHub in September 2015.
- Overview
- Download
- License
- Why Use cloc?
- Other Counters
- Basic Use
- Building a Windows Executable
- Options
- Recognized Languages
- How it Works
- Advanced Use
- Limitations
- How to Request Support for Additional Languages
- Author
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright
[Overview!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
[Translations of this page: Bulgarian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovakian, Ukrainian ]
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, Mac OS X, 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, Cygwin, or MobaXTerm with the Perl plug-in installed. Alternatively one can use the Windows binary of cloc generated with [PAR::Packer](http://search.cpan.org/~rschupp/PAR-Packer- 1.019/lib/pp.pm) to run on Windows computers that have neither Perl nor Cygwin.)
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.
Depending your operating system, one of these installation methods may work for you:
npm install -g cloc # https://www.npmjs.com/package/cloc
sudo apt-get install cloc # Debian, Ubuntu
sudo yum install cloc # Red Hat, Fedora
sudo pacman -S cloc # Arch
sudo pkg install cloc # FreeBSD
sudo port install cloc # Mac OS X with MacPorts
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/releases/latest
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/raw/master/cloc
[License!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
cloc is licensed under the [GNU General Public License, v 2] (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html), 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 L icense.
[Why Use cloc?!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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, 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, Mac OS X, 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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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 Wikipe dia entry for source code line counts.
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 input files if Digest::MD5 is installed locally. If Digest::MD5 is not found the file uniqueness check is skipped.
The Windows binary is built on a computer that has both Regexp::Common and Digest::MD5 installed locally.
[Building a Windows Executable!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
The default Windows download, cloc-1.64.exe, was built with PAR::Packer on a Windows 7 computer with Strawberry Perl. 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;
Windows executables of cloc versions 1.60 and earlier, created with perl2exe as noted above, are about 1.6 MB, while newer versions, created with PAR::Packer, are 11 MB. Why are the newer executables so much larger? My theory is that perl2exe uses smarter tree pruning logic than PAR::Packer, but that's pure speculation.
If you have access to perl2exe, you can use it to create a tight Windows executable. See lines 84-87 in the cloc source code for a minor code modification that is necessary when using perl2exe.
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:> perl -MCPAN -e shell cpan> install PAR::Packer cpan> exit C:> pp cloc-1.64.pl
A variation on the above is if you installed the portable version of Strawberry Perl, you will need to run portableshell.bat first to properly set up your environment. The Strawberry Perl derived executable on the GitHub download area was created with the portable version on a Windows 7 computer.
[Basic Use!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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, one must first open up a command (aka DOS) window and invoke cloc.exe from the command line there.
[Options!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
prompt> cloc
Usage: cloc [options] | |
Count, or compute differences of, physical lines of source code in the
given files (may be archives such as compressed tarballs or zip files)
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.
See also --exclude-list-file.
--unicode Check binary files to see if they contain Unicode
expanded ASCII text. This causes performance to
drop noticably.
Processing Options
--autoconf Count .in files (as processed by GNU autoconf) of
recognized languages.
--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.
--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. See also --diff, --diff-alignment,
--diff-timeout, --ignore-case, --ignore-whitespace.
--diff SET1 SET2 Compute differences in code and comments between
source file(s) in SET1 and SET2. The inputs
may be pairs of files, directories, or archives.
Use --diff-alignment to generate a list showing
which file pairs where compared. See also
--count-and-diff, --diff-alignment, --diff-timeout,
--ignore-case, --ignore-whitespace.
--diff-timeout N Ignore files which take more than N seconds
to process. Default is 10 seconds.
(Large files with many repeated lines can cause
Algorithm::Diff::sdiff() to take hours.)
--follow-links [Unix only] Follow symbolic links to directories
(sym links to files are always followed).
--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 is omitted, every file will be counted
with the counter. This option can be
specified multiple times (but that is only
useful when 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/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).
--ignore-whitespace Ignore horizontal white space when comparing files
with --diff. See also --ignore-case.
--ignore-case Ignore changes in case; consider upper- and lower-
case letters equivalent when comparing files with
--diff. See also --ignore-whitespace.
--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.
--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 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 ).
--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).
--stdin-name=FILE Give a file name to use to determine the language
for standard input.
--strip-comments=EXT For each file processed, write to the current
directory a version of the file which has blank
lines and comments removed. 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.
--original-dir [Only effective in combination with
--strip-comments] Write the stripped files
to the same directory as the original files.
--sum-reports Input arguments are report files previously
created with the --report-file option. Makes
a cumulative set of results containing the
sum of data from the individual report files.
--unix Override the operating system autodetection
logic and run in UNIX mode. See also
--windows, --show-os.
--windows Override the operating system autodetection
logic and run in Microsoft Windows mode.
See also --unix, --show-os.
Filter Options
--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 that have /.cache/ or /test/ as part
of their path.
Directories named .bzr, .cvs, .hg, .git, and
.svn are always excluded.
--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.
--include-lang=L1[,L2,] Count only the given comma separated languages
L1, L2, L3, et cetera.
--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/.
--not-match-d=REGEX Count all files except those in directories
matching the Perl 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.
--not-match-f=REGEX Count all files except those whose basenames
match the Perl regex.
--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.
--explain= 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.
--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.
--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).
--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 (see also
--force-lang-def, --read-lang-def).
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
--out=FILE Synonym for --report-file=FILE.
--csv to be on.
--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. Currently, the
only style option is Oracle.
--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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
prompt> cloc --show-lang ABAP (abap) ActionScript (as) Ada (ada, adb, ads, pad) ADSO/IDSM (adso) AMPLE (ample, dofile, startup) Ant (build.xml) Apex Trigger (trigger) Arduino Sketch (ino, pde) ASP (asa, asp) ASP.Net (asax, ascx, asmx, aspx, master, sitemap, webinfo) Assembly (asm, S, s) AutoHotkey (ahk) awk (awk) Bourne Again Shell (bash) Bourne Shell (sh) C (c, ec, pgc) C Shell (csh, tcsh) C# (cs) C++ (C, c++, cc, cpp, cxx, pcc) C/C++ Header (H, h, hh, hpp) CCS (ccs) Clojure (clj) ClojureScript (cljs) CMake (cmake, CMakeLists.txt) COBOL (CBL, cbl, cob, COB) CoffeeScript (coffee) ColdFusion (cfm) ColdFusion CFScript (cfc) CSS (css) CUDA (cu) Cython (pyx) D/dtrace (d) DAL (da) Dart (dart) diff (diff) DITA (dita) DOORS Extension Language (dxl) DOS Batch (bat, BAT, BTM, btm, CMD, cmd) DTD (dtd) ECPP (ecpp) Elixir (ex, exs) ERB (erb, ERB) Erlang (erl, hrl) Expect (exp) F# (fs, fsi) Focus (focexec) Fortran 77 (f, F, F77, f77, for, FOR, FTN, ftn, pfo) Fortran 90 (f90, F90) Fortran 95 (f95, F95) Go (go) Grails (gsp) Groovy (gant, gradle, groovy) Haml (haml) Handlebars (handlebars, hbs) Harbour (hb) Haskell (hs, lhs) HLSL (cg, cginc, hlsl, shader) HTML (htm, html) IDL (idl) IDL/Qt Project/Prolog (pro) InstallShield (ism) Java (java) Javascript (js) JavaServer Faces (jsf, xhtml) JCL (jcl) JSON (json) JSP (jsp, jspf) Kermit (ksc) Korn Shell (ksh) Kotlin (kt) LESS (less) lex (l) Lisp (el, lisp, lsp, sc) Lisp/Julia (jl) Lisp/OpenCL (cl) LiveLink OScript (oscript) Lua (lua) m4 (ac, m4) make (am, Gnumakefile, gnumakefile, makefile, Makefile) MATLAB (m) Maven (pom, pom.xml) Modula3 (i3, ig, m3, mg) MSBuild script (csproj, vbproj, vcproj, wdproj, wixproj) MUMPS (mps, m) Mustache (mustache) MXML (mxml) NAnt script (build) NASTRAN DMAP (dmap) Objective C (m) Objective C++ (mm) OCaml (ml, mli, mll, mly) Oracle Forms (fmt) Oracle Reports (rex) Pascal (dpr, p, pas) Pascal/Puppet (pp) Patran Command Language (pcl, ses) Perl (perl, plh, plx, pm) Perl/Prolog (PL, pl) PHP (php, php3, php4, php5) PHP/Pascal (inc) Pig Latin (pig) PL/I (pl1) PowerShell (ps1) Prolog (P) Protocol Buffers (proto) PureScript (purs) Python (py) QML (qml) R (R) Racket (rkt, rktl, sch, scm, scrbl, ss) Razor (cshtml) Rexx (rexx) RobotFramework (robot, tsv) Ruby (rake, rb) Ruby HTML (rhtml) Rust (rs) SAS (sas) SASS (sass, scss) Scala (scala) sed (sed) SKILL (il) SKILL++ (ils) Smarty (smarty, tpl) Softbridge Basic (SBL, sbl) SQL (psql, SQL, sql) SQL Data (data.sql) SQL Stored Procedure (spc.sql, spoc.sql, sproc.sql, udf.sql) Standard ML (fun, sig, sml) Swift (swift) Tcl/Tk (itk, tcl, tk) Teamcenter met (met) Teamcenter mth (mth) Titanium Style Sheet (tss) TypeScript (ts) Unity-Prefab (mat, prefab) Vala (vala) Vala Header (vapi) Velocity Template Language (vm) Verilog-SystemVerilog (sv, svh, v) VHDL (VHD, vhd, vhdl, VHDL) vim script (vim) Visual Basic (bas, cls, ctl, dsr, frm, VB, vb, vba, VBA, VBS, vbs) Visual Fox Pro (sca, SCA) Visualforce Component (component) Visualforce Page (page) Windows Message File (mc) Windows Module Definition (def) Windows Resource File (rc, rc2) WiX include (wxi) WiX source (wxs) WiX string localization (wxl) XAML (xaml) xBase (prg) xBase Header (ch) XML (XML, xml) XQuery (xq, xquery) XSD (XSD, xsd) XSLT (xsl, XSL, xslt, XSLT) yacc (y) YAML (yaml, yml)
The above list can be customized by reading language definitions from a
file with the --read-lang-def or --force-lang-def options.
Eight file extensions map to multiple languages:
.clfiles could be Lisp or OpenCL.incfiles could be PHP or Pascal.jlfiles could be Lisp or Julia.mfiles could be MATLAB, Mercury, MUMPS, or Objective C.pfiles could be D or dtrace.plfiles could be Perl or Prolog.ppfiles could be Pascal or Puppet.profiles could be IDL, Prolog, or a Qt Project
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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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 recognzied 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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
[Remove Comments from Source Code!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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.
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](forum post)).
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
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.
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-aligment=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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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'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 remove_matches ^\s*//
filter call_regexp_common C
extension C
extension cc
extension cpp
extension cxx
extension pcc
3rd_gen_scale 1.51
C++ has two filters: first, remove lines that start with optional
whitespace and are followed by //.
Next, remove all C comments. C comments are difficult to express
as regular expressions so a call is made to Regexp::Common to get the
appropriate regular expression to match C comments which are then removed.
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!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[SQL!^](#___top "click to go to top of document")
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 mysql 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.