cloc Download - cloc Source code download

cloc

Count Lines of Code

cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.

Latest release: v2.02 (Aug. 2, 2024)

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
- Java Programmatic Interface
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-2.02.pl) or a Windows executable (cloc-2.02.exe).

On this page, cloc is the generic term used to refer to any of these.

Include Security has a YouTube video showing the steps in action.

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 https://github.com/inducer/pudb.git

prompt> cd pudb

prompt> cloc 6be804e07a5db
      48 text files.
      41 unique files.                              
       8 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.99  T=0.04 s (1054.9 files/s, 189646.8 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          28           1519            728           4659
reStructuredText                 6            102             20            203
YAML                             2              9              2             75
Bourne Shell                     3              6              0             17
Text                             1              0              0             11
make                             1              4              6             10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            41           1640            756           4975
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Run via docker on git-bash

docker run --rm -v "/$(pwd -W)":/tmp aldanial/cloc

Install via package manager

Depending your operating system, one of these installation methods may work for you (all but the last two entries for Windows require a Perl interpreter):

npm install -g cloc              # https://www.npmjs.com/package/cloc
sudo apt install cloc            # Debian, Ubuntu
sudo yum install cloc            # Red Hat, Fedora
sudo dnf install cloc            # Fedora 22 or later
sudo pacman -S cloc              # Arch
sudo emerge -av dev-util/cloc    # Gentoo https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-util/cloc
sudo apk add cloc                # Alpine Linux
doas pkg_add cloc                # OpenBSD
sudo pkg install cloc            # FreeBSD
sudo port install cloc           # macOS with MacPorts
brew install cloc                # macOS with Homebrew
winget install AlDanial.Cloc     # Windows with winget
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, Markdown, SQL, JSON, XML, YAML, comma separated values.
Can count code within compressed archives (tar balls, Zip files, Java .ear files).
Has numerous troubleshooting options.
Handles file and directory names with spaces and other unusual characters.
Has no dependencies outside the standard Perl distribution.
Runs on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, and z/OS systems that have Perl 5.6 or higher. The source version runs on Windows with either ActiveState Perl, Strawberry Perl, Cygwin, or MobaXTerm+Perl plugin. Alternatively on Windows one can run the Windows binary which has no dependencies.

Other Counters ▲

If cloc does not suit your needs here are other freely available counters to consider:

loc
gcloc
gocloc
Ohcount
scc
sclc
SLOCCount
Sonar
tokei
Unified Code Count

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 ▲

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:> cpan -i Win32::LongPath
C:> pp -M Win32::LongPath -M Encode::Unicode -M Digest::MD5 -c -x -o cloc-2.02.exe cloc-2.02.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.

The Windows executable in the Releases section, cloc-2.02.exe, was built on a 64 bit Windows 10 computer using Strawberry Perl 5.30.2 and PAR::Packer to build the .exe.

Is the Windows executable safe to run? Does it have malware?

Ideally, no one would need the Windows executable because they have a Perl interpreter installed on their machines and can run the cloc source file. On centrally-managed corporate Windows machines, however, this this may be difficult or impossible.

The Windows executable distributed with cloc is provided as a best-effort of a virus and malware-free .exe. You are encouraged to run your own virus scanners against the executable and also check sites such https://www.virustotal.com/ . The entries for recent versions are:

cloc-2.02-winget.exe: (includes PR 850 to allow running from a symlink on Windows) https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/be033061e091fea48a5bc9e8964cee0416ddd5b34bd5226a1c9aa4b30bdba66a?nocache=1

cloc-2.02.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/369ed76125f7399cd582d169adf39a2e08ae5066031fea0cc8b2836ea50e7ce2?nocache=1

cloc-2.00.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/7a234ef0cb495de1b5776acf88c5554e2bab1fb02725a5fb85756a6db3121c1f

cloc-1.98.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/88615d193ec8c06f7ceec3cc1d661088af997798d87ddff331d9e9f9128a6782?nocache=1

cloc-1.96.1.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/00b1c9dbbfb920dabd374418e1b86d2c24b8cd2b8705aeb956dee910d0d75d45?nocache=1

cloc-1.96.exe: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/54bf5f46fbaba7949c4eb2d4837b03c774c0ba587448a5bad9b8efc0222b1583?nocache=1

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.

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] | |

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= 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 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 FilesWinZipWinZip32.exe" -e -o >FILE< ."
(if WinZip is installed there).
--list-file= Take the list of file and/or directory names to
process from , 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
to - to read file names from a STDIN pipe.
See also --exclude-list-file.
--diff-list-file= Take the pairs of file names to be diff'ed from
, 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= Invoke a system call to to obtain a list of
files to work on. If 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 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 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 . 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 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 Read command line switches from 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
First perform direct code counts of source file(s)
of and 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 Compute differences in code and comments between
source file(s) of and . 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 Ignore files which take more than seconds
to process. Default is 10 seconds. Setting
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=[,]
Process all files that have a extension
with the counter for language . 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= Load language processing filters from ,
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= Count files without extensions using the
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= Skip files larger than megabytes when
traversing directories. By default, =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= Load new language processing filters from
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,
--write-lang-def-incl-dup).
--script-lang=, Process all files that invoke as a #!
scripting language with the counter for language
. 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, ,
must have the right case. This option can be
specified multiple times. See also --force-lang,
--lang-no-ext.
--sdir= Use 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= 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= 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 . 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 Ignore files which take more than 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 to 0 allows
unlimited time. See also --diff-timeout.
--processes=NUM [Available only on systems with a recent version
of the Parallel::ForkManager module. Not
available on Windows.] Sets the maximum number of
cores that cloc uses. The default value of 0
disables multiprocessing.
--unix Override the operating system autodetection
logic and run in UNIX mode. See also
--windows, --show-os.
--use-sloccount If SLOCCount is installed, use its compiled
executables c_count, java_count, pascal_count,
php_count, and xml_count instead of cloc's
counters. SLOCCount's compiled counters are
substantially faster than cloc's and may give
a performance improvement when counting projects
with large files. However, these cloc-specific
features will not be available: --diff,
--count-and-diff, --strip-comments, --unicode.
--windows Override the operating system autodetection
logic and run in Microsoft Windows mode.
See also --unix, --show-os.

Filter Options
--include-content= Only count files containing text that matches the
given regular expression.
--exclude-content= Exclude files containing text that matches the given
regular expression.
--exclude-dir=[,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=
to supply a regex matching multiple subdirectories.
--exclude-ext=[,[...]]
Do not count files having the given file name
extensions.
--exclude-lang=[,L2[...]]
Exclude the given comma separated languages
L1, L2, L3, et cetera, from being counted.
--exclude-list-file= Ignore files and/or directories whose names
appear in . 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=[,ext2[...]]
Count only languages having the given comma
separated file extensions. Use --show-ext to
see the recognized extensions.
--include-lang=[,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= 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= 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= 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= 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= 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= Save file sizes in bytes, identified languages
and names of categorized files to .
--counted= Save names of processed source files to .
--diff-alignment= Write to 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= Print the filters used to remove comments for
language 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= Save names of every file found to .
--ignored= Save names of ignored files and the reason they
were ignored to .
--print-filter-stages Print processed source code before and after
each filter is applied.
--show-ext[=] Print information about all known (or just the
given) file extensions and exit.
--show-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[=] Verbose switch (optional numeric value).
-verbose[=] Long form of -v.
--version Print the version of this program and exit.
--write-lang-def= Writes to 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=
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= Use the character as the delimiter for comma
separated files instead of ,. This switch forces --csv to be on.
--file-encoding= Write output files using the encoding instead of
the default ASCII ( = '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= Synonym for --report-file=.
--progress-rate= Show progress update after every files are
processed (default =100). Set to 0 to
suppress progress output (useful when redirecting
output to STDOUT).
--quiet Suppress all information messages except for
the final report.
--report-file= Write the results to instead of STDOUT.
--sql= Write results as SQL create and insert statements
which can be read by a database program such as
SQLite. If 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= Use as the project identifier for the
current run. Only valid with the --sql option.
--sql-style=

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