1cloc(1) User Commands cloc(1)
2
6 cloc - Count, or compute differences of, lines of source code and
7 comments.
8
10 cloc [options] <FILE|DIR> ...
11
13 Count, or compute differences of, physical lines of source code in the
14 given files (may be archives such as compressed tarballs or zip files,
15 or git commit hashes or branch names) and/or recursively below the
16 given directories. It is written entirely in Perl, using only modules
17 from the standard distribution.
18
20 Input Options
21 To count standard input, use the special filename - and either
22 --stdin-name=FILE to tell cloc the name of the file being piped in, or
23 --force-lang=LANG to apply the LANG counter to all input.
24 --extract-with=CMD
26 This option is only needed if cloc is unable to figure out how to
27 extract the contents of the input file(s) by itself. Use CMD to
28 extract binary archive files (e.g.: .tar.gz, .zip, .Z). Use the
29 literal '>FILE<' as a stand-in for the actual file(s) to be
30 extracted. For example, to count lines of code in the input files
31 gcc-4.2.tar.gz perl-5.8.8.tar.gz on Unix use:
32 --extract-with='gzip -dc >FILE< | tar xf -
34 or, if you have GNU tar:
36 --extract-with='tar zxf >FILE<'
38 and on Windows, use, for example:
40 --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe\" -e -o >FILE<
42 --list-file=FILE
44 Take the list of file and/or directory names to process from FILE,
45 which has one file/directory name per line. Only exact matches are
46 counted; relative path names will be resolved starting from the
47 directory where cloc is invoked. Set FILE to - to read file names
48 from a STDIN pipe. See also --exclude-list-file, --config.
49 --diff-list-file=FILE
51 Take the pairs of file names to be diff'ed from FILE, whose format
52 matches the output of --diff-alignment. (Run with that option to
53 see a sample.) The language identifier at the end of each line is
54 ignored. This enables --diff mode and by-passes file pair
55 alignment logic. See also --config.
56 --vcs=VCS
58 Invoke a system call to VCS to obtain a list of files to work on.
59 If VCS is 'git', then will invoke 'git ls-files' to get a file list
60 and 'git submodule status' to get a list of submodules whose
61 contents will be ignored. See also --git which accepts git commit
62 hashes and branch names. If VCS is 'svn' then will invoke 'svn
63 list -R'. The primary benefit is that cloc will then skip files
64 explicitly excluded by the versioning tool in question, ie, those
65 in .gitignore or have the svn:ignore property. Alternatively VCS
66 may be any system command that generates a list of files. Note:
67 cloc must be in a directory which can read the files as they are
68 returned by VCS. cloc will not download files from remote
69 repositories. 'svn list -R' may refer to a remote repository to
70 obtain file names (and therefore may require authentication to the
71 remote repository), but the files themselves must be local.
72 Setting VCS to 'auto' selects between 'git' and 'svn' (or neither)
73 depending on the presence of a .git or .svn subdirectory below the
74 directory where cloc is invoked.
75 --unicode
77 Check binary files to see if they contain Unicode expanded ASCII
78 text. This causes performance to drop noticeably.
79 Processing Options
81 --autoconf
82 Count .in files (as processed by GNU autoconf) of recognized
83 languages. See also --no-autogen.
84 --by-file
86 Report results for every source file encountered.
87 --by-file-by-lang
89 Report results for every source file encountered in addition to
90 reporting by language.
91 --config FILE
93 Read command line switches from FILE instead of the default
94 location of ~/.config/cloc/options.txt. The file should contain
95 one switch, along with arguments (if any), per line. Blank lines
96 and lines beginning with '#' are skipped. Options given on the
97 command line take priority over entries read from the file. If a
98 directory is also given with any of these switches: --list-file,
99 --exclude-list-file, --read-lang-def, --force-lang-def,
100 --diff-list-file and a config file exists in that directory, it
101 will take priority over ~/.config/cloc/options.txt.
102 --count-and-diff SET1 SET2
104 First perform direct code counts of source file(s) of SET1 and SET2
105 separately, then perform a diff of these. Inputs may be pairs of
106 files, directories, or archives. If --out or --report-file is
107 given, three output files will be created, one for each of the two
108 counts and one for the diff. See also --diff, --diff-alignment,
109 --diff-timeout, --ignore-case, --ignore-whitespace.
110 --diff SET1 SET2
112 Compute differences in code and comments between source file(s) of
113 SET1 and SET2. The inputs may be pairs of files, directories, or
114 archives. Use --diff-alignment to generate a list showing which
115 file pairs where compared. See also --count-and-diff,
116 --diff-alignment, --diff-timeout, --ignore-case,
117 --ignore-whitespace.
118 --diff-timeout N
120 Ignore files which take more than N seconds to process. Default is
121 10 seconds. Setting N to 0 allows unlimited time. (Large files
122 with many repeated lines can cause Algorithm::Diff::sdiff() to take
123 hours.)
124 --docstring-as-code
126 cloc considers docstrings to be comments, but this is not always
127 correct as docstrings represent regular strings when they appear on
128 the right hand side of an assignment or as function arguments.
129 This switch forces docstrings to be counted as code.
130 --follow-links
132 [Unix only] Follow symbolic links to directories (sym links to
133 files are always followed).
134 --force-lang=LANG[,EXT]
136 Process all files that have a EXT extension with the counter for
137 language LANG. For example, to count all .f files with the Fortran
138 90 counter (which expects files to end with .f90) instead of the
139 default Fortran 77 counter, use:
140 --force-lang="Fortran 90",f
142 If EXT is omitted, every file will be counted with the LANG
144 counter. This option can be specified multiple times (but that is
145 only useful when EXT is given each time). See also --script-lang,
146 --lang-no-ext.
147 --force-lang-def=FILE
149 Load language processing filters from FILE, then use these filters
150 instead of the built-in filters. Note: languages which map to the
151 same file extension (for example: MATLAB/Objective-C/MUMPS;
152 Pascal/PHP; Lisp/OpenCL; Lisp/Julia; Perl/Prolog) will be ignored
153 as these require additional processing that is not expressed in
154 language definition files. Use --read-lang-def to define new
155 language filters without replacing built-in filters (see also
156 --write-lang-def, --write-lang-def-incl-dup).
157 --git
159 Forces the inputs to be interpreted as git targets (commit hashes,
160 branch names, et cetera) if these are not first identified as file
161 or directory names. This option overrides the --vcs=git logic if
162 this is given; in other words, --git gets its list of files to work
163 on directly from git using the hash or branch name rather than from
164 'git ls-files'. This option can be used with --diff to perform
165 line count diffs between git commits, or between a git commit and a
166 file, directory, or archive. Use -v/--verbose to see the git
167 system commands cloc issues.
168 --git-diff-rel
170 Same as --git --diff, or just --diff if the inputs are recognized
171 as git targets. Only files which have changed in either commit are
172 compared.
173 --git-diff-all
175 Git diff strategy #2: compare all files in the repository between
176 the two commits.
177 --ignore-whitespace
179 Ignore horizontal white space when comparing files with --diff.
180 See also --ignore-case.
181 --ignore-case
183 Ignore changes in case within file contents; consider upper- and
184 lowercase letters equivalent when comparing files with --diff. See
185 also --ignore-whitespace.
186 --ignore-case-ext
188 Ignore case of file name extensions. This will cause problems
189 counting some languages (specifically, .c and .C are associated
190 with C and C++; this switch would count .C files as C rather than
191 C++ on *nix operating systems). File name case insensitivity is
192 always true on Windows.
193 --lang-no-ext=LANG
195 Count files without extensions using the LANG counter. This option
196 overrides internal logic for files without extensions (where such
197 files are checked against known scripting languages by examining
198 the first line for "#!"). See also --force-lang, --script-lang.
199 --max-file-size=MB
201 Skip files larger than "MB" megabytes when traversing directories.
202 By default, "MB"=100. cloc's memory requirement is roughly twenty
203 times larger than the largest file so running with files larger
204 than 100 MB on a computer with less than 2 GB of memory will cause
205 problems. Note: this check does not apply to files explicitly
206 passed as command line arguments.
207 --no-autogen[=list]
209 Ignore files generated by code-production systems such as GNU
210 autoconf. To see a list of these files (then exit), run with
211 --no-autogen list See also --autoconf.
212 ==item --original-dir
214 Only effective in combination with --strip-comments. Write the
216 stripped files to the same directory as the original files.
217 --read-binary-files
219 Process binary files in addition to text files. This is usually a
220 bad idea and should only be attempted with text files that have
221 embedded binary data.
222 --read-lang-def=FILE
224 Load new language processing filters from FILE and merge them with
225 those already known to cloc. If FILE defines a language cloc
226 already knows about, cloc's definition will take precedence. Use
227 --force-lang-def to over-ride cloc's definitions. (see also
228 --write-lang-def).
229 --script-lang=LANG,S
231 Process all files that invoke "S" as a "#!" scripting language with
232 the counter for language LANG. For example, files that begin with
233 "#!/usr/local/bin/perl5.8.8" will be counted with the Perl counter
234 by using
235 --script-lang=Perl,perl5.8.8
237 The language name is case insensitive but the name of the script
239 language executable, "S", must have the right case. This option can
240 be specified multiple times. See also --force-lang.
241 --sdir=DIR
243 Use DIR as the scratch directory instead of letting File::Temp
244 chose the location. Files written to this location are not removed
245 at the end of the run (as they are with File::Temp).
246 --skip-leading=N[,ext]
248 Skip the first <N> lines of each file. If a
249 comma separated list of extensions is also given,
250 only skip lines from those file types. Example:
251 --skip-leading=10,cpp,h
253 will skip the first ten lines of *.cpp and *.h files. This is
255 useful for ignoring boilerplate text.
256 --skip-uniqueness
258 Skip the file uniqueness check. This will give a performance boost
259 at the expense of counting files with identical contents multiple
260 times (if such duplicates exist).
261 --stat
263 Some file systems (AFS, CD-ROM, FAT, HPFS, SMB) do not have
264 directory 'nlink' counts that match the number of its
265 subdirectories. Consequently cloc may undercount or completely
266 skip the contents of such file systems. This switch forces
267 File::Find to stat directories to obtain the correct count. File
268 search spead will decrease. See also --follow-links.
269 --stdin-name=FILE
271 Count lines streamed via STDIN as if they came from a file named
272 FILE.
273 --strip-comments=EXT
275 For each file processed, write to the current directory a version
276 of the file which has blank and commented lines removed (in-line
277 comments persist). The name of each stripped file is the original
278 file name with ".EXT" appended to it. It is written to the current
279 directory unless --original-dir is on.
280 --strip-str-comments
282 Replace comment markers embedded in strings with 'xx'. This
283 attempts to work around a limitation in Regexp::Common::Comment
284 where comment markers embedded in strings are seen as actual
285 comment markers and not strings, often resulting in a 'Complex
286 regular subexpression recursion limit' warning and incorrect
287 counts. There are two disadvantages to using this switch: 1/code
288 count performance drops, and 2/code generated with --strip-comments
289 will contain different strings where ever embedded comments are
290 found.
291 --sum-reports
293 Input arguments are report files previously created with the
294 --report-file option. Makes a cumulative set of results containing
295 the sum of data from the individual report files.
296 --timeout=N
298 Ignore files which take more than <N> seconds to process at any of
300 the language's filter stages. The default maximum number of
301 seconds spent on a filter stage is the number of lines in the file
302 divided by one thousand. Setting N to 0 allows unlimited time.
303 See also --diff-timeout.
304 --processes=NUM
306 [Available only on systems with a recent version of the
307 Parallel::ForkManager module. Not available on Windows.] Sets the
308 maximum number of cores that cloc uses. The default value of 0
309 disables multiprocessing.
310 --unix
312 Over-ride the operating system detection logic and run in UNIX
313 mode. See also --windows, --show-os.
314 --use-sloccount
316 If SLOCCount is installed, use its compiled executables c_count,
317 java_count, pascal_count, php_count, and xml_count instead of
318 cloc's counters. SLOCCount's compiled counters are substantially
319 faster than cloc's and may give a performance improvement when
320 counting projects with large files. However, these cloc-specific
321 features will not be available: --diff, --count-and-diff,
322 --strip-comments, --unicode.
323 --windows
325 Over-ride the operating system detection logic and run in Microsoft
326 Windows mode. See also --unix, --show-os.
327 Filter Options
329 --exclude-content=REGEX
330 Exclude files containing text that matches the given regular
331 expression.
332 --exclude-dir=DIR1[,DIR2 ...]
334 Exclude the given comma separated directories from being scanned.
335 For example:
336 --exclude-dir=.cache,test
338 will skip all files that match "/.cache/" or "/test/" as part of
340 their path. Directories named ".bzr", ".cvs", ".hg", ".git", and
341 ".svn" are always excluded. This option only works with individual
342 directory names so including file path separators is not allowed.
343 Use --fullpath and --not-match-d=REGEX to supply a regex matching
344 multiple subdirectories.
345 --exclude-ext=EXT1[,EXT2 ...]
347 Do not count files having the given file name extensions.
348 --exclude-lang=L1[,L2[...]]
350 Exclude the given comma separated languages from being counted.
351 --exclude-list-file=FILE
353 Ignore files and/or directories whose names appear in FILE. FILE
354 should have one file name per line. Only exact matches are
355 ignored; relative path names will be resolved starting from the
356 directory where cloc is invoked. See also --list-file, --config.
357 --fullpath
359 Modifies the behavior of --match-f or --not-match-f to include the
360 file's path in the regex, not just the file's basename. (This does
361 not expand each file to include its absolute path, instead it uses
362 as much of the path as is passed in to cloc.)
363 --include-ext=<ext1[,ext2[...]]>
365 Count only languages having the given comma separated file
366 extensions. Use --show-ext to see the recognized extensions.
367 --include-lang=L1[,L2 ...]
369 Count only the given comma separated languages L1, L2, L3, et
370 cetera.
371 --match-d=REGEX
373 Only count files in directories matching the Perl regex. For
374 example
375 --match-d='/(src|include)/'
377 only counts files in directory paths containing "/src/" or
379 "/include/".
380 --not-match-d=REGEX
382 Count all files except in directories matching the Perl regex.
383 Only the trailing directory name is compared, for example, when
384 counting in "/usr/local/lib", only "lib" is compared to the regex.
385 Add --fullpath to compare parent directories to the regex. Do not
386 include file path separators at the beginning or end of the regex.
387 --match-f=REGEX
389 Only count files whose basenames match the Perl regex. For example
390 this only counts files at start with Widget or widget:
391 --match-f='^[Ww]idget'
393 Add --fullpath to include parent directories in the regex instead
395 of just the basename.
396 --not-match-f=REGEX
398 Count all files except those whose basenames match the Perl regex.
399 Add --fullpath to include parent directories in the regex instead
400 of just the basename.
401 --skip-archive=REGEX
403 Ignore files that end with the given Perl regular expression. For
404 example, if given
405 --skip-archive='(zip|tar(\.(gz|Z|bz2|xz|7z))?)'
407 the code will skip files that end with .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.Z,
409 .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, and .tar.7z.
410 --skip-win-hidden
412 On Windows, ignore hidden files.
413 Debug Options
415 --categorized=FILE
416 Save names of categorized files to FILE.
417 --counted=FILE
419 Save names of processed source files to FILE.
420 --diff-alignment=FILE
422 Write to FILE a list of files and file pairs showing which files
423 were added, removed, and/or compared during a run with --diff.
424 This switch forces the --diff mode on.
425 --explain=LANG
427 Print the filters used to remove comments for language LANG and
428 exit. In some cases the filters refer to Perl subroutines rather
429 than regular expressions. An examination of the source code may be
430 needed for further explanation.
431 --help
433 Print cloc's internal usage information and exit.
434 --found=FILE
436 Save names of every file found to FILE.
437 --ignored=FILE
439 Save names of ignored files and the reason they were ignored to
440 FILE.
441 --print-filter-stages
443 Print to STDOUT processed source code before and after each filter
444 is applied.
445 --show-ext[=EXT]
447 Print information about all known (or just the given) file
448 extensions and exit.
449 --show-lang[=LANG]
451 Print information about all known (or just the given) languages and
452 exit.
453 --show-os
455 Print the value of the operating system mode and exit. See also
456 --unix, --windows.
457 -v[=N]
459 Turn on verbose with optional numeric value.
460 --verbose[=N]
462 Long form of -v.
463 --version
465 Print the version of this program and exit.
466 --write-lang-def=FILE
468 Writes to FILE the language processing filters then exits. Useful
469 as a first step to creating custom language definitions. Note:
470 languages which map to the same file extension will be excluded.
471 See also --force-lang-def, --read-lang-def.
472 --write-lang-def-incl-dup=FILE
474 Same as --write-lang-def, but includes duplicated extensions. This
475 generates a problematic language definition file because cloc will
476 refuse to use it until duplicates are removed.
477 Output Options
479 --3 Print third-generation language output. (This option can cause
480 report summation to fail if some reports were produced with this
481 option while others were produced without it.)
482 --by-percent X
484 Instead of comment and blank line counts, show these values as
485 percentages based on the value of X in the denominator, where X is
486 one of
487 c meaning lines of code
488 cm meaning lines of code + comments
489 cb meaning lines of code + blanks
490 cmb meaning lines of code + comments + blanks
491 For example, if using method 'c' and your code has twice as many
493 lines of comments as lines of code, the value in the comment column
494 will be 200%. The code column remains a line count.
495 --csv
497 Write the results as comma separated values.
498 --csv-delimiter=C
500 Use the character C as the delimiter for comma separated files
501 instead of ,. This switch forces --csv to be on.
502 --file-encoding=E
504 Write output files using the E encoding instead of the default
505 ASCII (E = 'UTF-7'). Examples: 'UTF-16', 'euc-kr', 'iso-8859-16'.
506 Known encodings can be printed with
507 perl -MEncode -e 'print join("\n", Encode->encodings(":all")),
508 "\n"'
509 --hide-rate
511 Do not show line and file processing rates in the output header.
512 This makes output deterministic.
513 --json
515 Write the results in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON).
516 --md
518 Write the results as Markdown-formatted text.
519 --out=FILE
521 Synonym for --report-file=FILE.
522 --progress-rate=N
524 Show progress update after every N files are processed (default
525 N=100). Set N to 0 to suppress progress output; useful when
526 redirecting output to STDOUT.
527 --quiet
529 Suppress all information messages except for the final report.
530 --report-file=FILE
532 Write the results to FILE instead of standard output.
533 --summary-cutoff=X:N
535 Aggregate to 'Other' results having X lines below N where X is one
536 of
537 c meaning lines of code
538 f meaning files
539 m meaning lines of comments
540 cm meaning lines of code + comments Appending a percent sign
541 to N changes the calculation from straight count to percentage.
542 Ignored with --diff or --by-file.
543 --sql=FILE
545 Write results as SQL CREATE and INSERT statements which can be read
546 by a database program such as SQLite. If FILE is -, output is sent
547 to STDOUT.
548 --sql-append
550 Append SQL insert statements to the file specified by --sql and do
551 not generate table creation option.
552 --sql-project=NAME
554 Use name as the project identifier for the current run. Only valid
555 with the --sql option.
556 --sql-style=STYLE
558 Write SQL statements in the given style instead of the default
559 SQLite format. Styles include Oracle and Named_Columns.
560 --sum-one
562 For plain text reports, show the SUM: output line even if only one
563 input file is processed.
564 --xml
566 Write the results in XML.
567 --xsl[=FILE]
569 Reference FILE as an XSL stylesheet within the XML output. If FILE
570 is not given, writes a default stylesheet, cloc.xsl. This switch
571 forces --xml to be on.
572 --yaml
574 Write the results in YAML.
575
577 Count the lines of code in the Perl 5.10.0 compressed tar file on a
578 UNIX-like operating system:
579 cloc perl-5.10.0.tar.gz
581 Count the changes in files, code, and comments between Python releases
583 2.6.6 and 2.7:
584 cloc --diff Python-2.6.6.tar.bz Python-2.7.tar.bz2
586 To see how cloc aligns files for comparison between two code bases, use
588 the --diff-alignment=FILE option. Here the alignment information is
589 written to "align.txt":
590 cloc --diff-aligment=align.txt gcc-4.4.0.tar.bz2 gcc-4.5.0.tar.bz2
592 Count file, code, and comment changes between two git commits:
594 cloc --git --diff b409850824 HEAD
596 Print the recognized languages:
598 cloc --show-lang
600 Remove comments from "foo.c" and save the result in "foo.c.nc" ("nc" is
602 an arbitrary extension; used here to denote "no comments"):
603 cloc --strip-comments=nc foo.c
605 Additional examples can be found at <https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc>.
607
609 None.
610
612 None.
613
615 sloccount(1)
616
618 The cloc program was written by Al Danial <al.danial@gmail.com> and is
619 Copyright (C) 2006-2019 <al.danial@gmail.com>.
620 The manual page was originally written by Jari Aalto
622 <jari.aalto@cante.net>.
623 Both the code and documentation is released under the GNU GPL version 2
625 or (at your option) any later version. For more information about
626 license, visit <http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html>.
627cloc 2023-07-19 cloc(1)