<a name="___top"></a>
# cloc
*Count Lines of Code*

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

Latest release:  v2.08 (Jan. 24, 2026)

[![Version](https://img.shields.io/badge/version-2.08-blue.svg)](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc)
[![Contributors](https://img.shields.io/github/contributors/AlDanial/cloc.svg)](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/graphs/contributors)
[![DOI](https://zenodo.org/badge/doi/10.5281/zenodo.42029482.svg)](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.42029482)
[![Forks](https://img.shields.io/github/forks/AlDanial/cloc.svg)](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/network/members)
[![Downloads](https://img.shields.io/github/downloads/AlDanial/cloc/total.svg)]()

cloc moved to GitHub in September 2015 after being hosted
at http://cloc.sourceforge.net/ since August 2006.

*   [Quick Start](#quick-start-)
*   [Overview](#overview-)
*   [Download](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/releases/latest)
    *   [Install via package manager](#install-via-package-manager)
    *   [Stable release](#stable-release)
    *   [Development version](#development-version)
*   [License](#license-)
*   [Why Use cloc?](#why-use-cloc-)
*   [Other Counters](#other-counters-)
*   [Building a Windows Executable](#building-a-windows-executable-)
*   [Basic Use](#basic-use-)
*   [GUI Frontends](#gui-frontends-)
*   [Options](#options-)
*   [Recognized Languages](#recognized-languages-)
*   [How it Works](#how-it-works-)
*   [Advanced Use](#advanced-use-)
    *   [Remove Comments from Source Code](#remove-comments-from-source-code-)
    *   [Work with Compressed Archives](#work-with-compressed-archives-)
    *   [Differences](#differences-)
    *   [Create Custom Language Definitions](#create-custom-language-definitions-)
    *   [Combine Reports](#combine-reports-)
    *   [SQL](#sql-)
    *   [Custom Column Output](#custom-column-output-)
    *   [Wrapping cloc in other scripts](#wrapping-cloc-in-other-scripts-)
    *   [git and UTF8 pathnames](#git-and-UTF8-pathnames-)
    *   [Third Generation Language Scale Factors](#third-generation-language-scale-factors-)
    *   [options.txt configuration file](#optionstxt-configuration-file-)
    *   [Python Programmatic Interface](#python-programmatic-interface-)
    *   [Java Programmatic Interface](#java-programmatic-interface-)
*   [Complex regular subexpression recursion limit ](#complex-regular-subexpression-recursion-limit-)
*   [Limitations](#limitations-)
*   [Requesting Support for Additional Languages](#requesting-support-for-additional-languages-)
*   [Reporting Problems](#reporting-problems-)
*   [Citation](#citation-)
*   [Acknowledgments](#acknowledgments-)
*   [Copyright](#copyright-)

<a name="Quick_Start"></a>      []({{{1)
# [Quick Start &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

Step 1:  Download cloc (several methods, see below) or run cloc's
[docker image](#run-via-docker).  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-2.08.pl`) or a Windows executable
(`cloc-2.08.exe`).

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

[Include Security](https://www.youtube.com/user/IncludeSecurity) has a
[YouTube video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRLTkDMsCqs)
showing the steps in action.

**a file**
<pre>
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

**a directory**
<pre>
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

**an archive**

We'll pull cloc's source zip file from GitHub, then count the contents:
<pre>
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

**a git repository, using a specific commit**

This example uses code from
<a href=https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pudb>PuDB</a>, a fantastic Python debugger.

<pre>
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

**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):
<pre>
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

**each subdirectory of a particular directory (Windows/cmd.exe)**
<pre>
for /D %I in (.\*) do cd %I && cloc --vcs git && cd ..
</pre>

[](1}}})
<a name="Overview"></a>      []({{{1)
# [Overview &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source
code in [many programming languages](#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](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc#regexp_common)) 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](http://www.activestate.com/activeperl) 5.6.1 or
higher, [Strawberry Perl](http://strawberryperl.com/),
Windows Subsystem for Linux,
[Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/),
[MobaXTerm](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/) with the Perl plug-in
installed,
or
a mingw environment and terminal such as provided by
[Git for Windows](https://gitforwindows.org/).
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.)

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](http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/),
Damian Conway and Abigail's Perl module
[Regexp::Common](http://search.cpan.org/%7Eabigail/Regexp-Common-2.120/lib/Regexp/Common.pm),
Sean M. Burke's Perl module
[Win32::Autoglob](http://search.cpan.org/%7Esburke/Win32-Autoglob-1.01/Autoglob.pm),
and Tye McQueen's Perl module
[Algorithm::Diff](http://search.cpan.org/%7Etyemq/Algorithm-Diff-1.1902/lib/Algorithm/Diff.pm).
Language scale factors were derived from Mayes Consulting, LLC web site
http://softwareestimator.com/IndustryData2.htm.

New releases nominally appear every six months.
[](1}}})

<a name="Docker"></a> []({{{1)
## Run via docker

These docker commands count lines of code in and below
the current directory:

```shell
docker run --rm -v $PWD:/tmp aldanial/cloc .
```

### Run via docker on git-bash
```shell
docker run --rm -v "/$(pwd -W)":/tmp aldanial/cloc .
```

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

    npm install -g cloc              # https://www.npmjs.com/package/cloc
    sudo apt install cloc            # Debian, Ubuntu
    sudo yum install cloc            # Red Hat, Fedora
    sudo dnf install cloc            # Fedora 22 or later
    sudo pacman -S cloc              # Arch
    yay -S cloc-git                  # Arch AUR (latest git version)
    sudo emerge -av dev-util/cloc    # Gentoo https://packages.gentoo.org/packages/dev-util/cloc
    sudo apk add cloc                # Alpine Linux
    doas pkg_add cloc                # OpenBSD
    sudo pkg install cloc            # FreeBSD
    sudo port install cloc           # macOS with MacPorts
    brew install cloc                # macOS with Homebrew
    winget install AlDanial.Cloc     # Windows with winget (might not work, ref https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues/849)
    choco install cloc               # Windows with Chocolatey
    scoop install cloc               # Windows with Scoop

**Note**: I don't control any of these packages.
If you encounter a bug in cloc using one of the above
packages, try with cloc pulled from the latest stable release here
on GitHub (link follows below) before submitting a problem report.
[](1}}})
<a name="Stable"></a> []({{{1)
## Stable release

Download the latest released cloc source file, for example `cloc-2.08.pl`, or
the Windows executable `cloc-2.08.exe` from
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/releases/latest

<a name="Dev"></a>
## Development version

Download the cloc source code at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/raw/master/cloc and
save it as the file `cloc` (or `cloc.pl`, or whatever executable name you wish).
The next step depends on the operating system you're using.

### On Unix-like systems, including macOS

In a terminal, go to the download directory
and make the cloc file executable, then give it a test run.
For example

```shell
» cd ~/Downloads
» chmod +x cloc
» ./cloc --version
```

For future use, move the file to a more convenient directory in your `PATH`
such as `/usr/local/bin` or `~/bin`.

### On Windows

You'll need a Perl interpreter such as [Strawberry Perl](http://strawberryperl.com/)
installed to run the source version of cloc.
After downloading the cloc source file, open a command prompt or PowerShell window,
navigate to the download directory (`C:\TEMP` in the example below), then test cloc with:

```dos
cd C:\TEMP>
C:TEMP\> perl cloc --version
```

[](1}}})
<a name="License"></a> []({{{1)
# [License &#9650;](#___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 License](https://opensource.org/license/artistic-2-0).
[](1}}})
<a name="why_use"></a> []({{{1)
# [Why Use cloc? &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

cloc has many features that make it easy to use, thorough, extensible, and portable:

1.  Exists as a single, self-contained file that requires minimal installation effort---just download the file and run it.
2.  Can read language comment definitions from a file and thus potentially work with computer languages that do not yet exist.
3.  Allows results from multiple runs to be summed together by language and by project.
4.  Can produce results in a variety of formats: plain text, Markdown, SQL, JSON, XML, YAML, comma separated values.
5.  Can count code within compressed archives (tar balls, Zip files, Java .ear files).
6.  Has numerous troubleshooting options.
7.  Handles file and directory names with spaces and other unusual characters.
8.  Has no dependencies outside the standard Perl distribution.
9.  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.
[](1}}})

<a name="Other_Counters"></a> []({{{1)
# [Other Counters &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

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

*   [loc](https://github.com/cgag/loc/)
*   [gcloc](https://github.com/JoaoDanielRufino/gcloc)
*   [gocloc](https://github.com/hhatto/gocloc/)
*   [Ohcount](https://github.com/blackducksoftware/ohcount/)
*   [scc](https://github.com/boyter/scc/)
*   [sclc](https://code.google.com/archive/p/sclc/)
*   [SLOCCount](http://www.dwheeler.com/sloccount/)
*   [Sonar](http://www.sonarsource.org/)
*   [tokei](https://github.com/Aaronepower/tokei/)
*   [Unified Code Count](http://csse.usc.edu/ucc_new/wordpress/)

Other references:

*   QSM's [directory](http://www.qsm.com/CodeCounters.html) of code counting tools.
*   The [Wikipedia entry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code) for source code line counts.
[](1}}})

# <a name="regexp_common">Regexp::Common, Digest::MD5, Win32::Autoglob, Algorithm::Diff</a> []({{{1)

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, <tt>--processes=<i>N</i></tt>, 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.
[](1}}})
<a name="building_exe"></a> []({{{1)
# [Building a Windows Executable &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

#### Create your own executable
The most robust option for creating a Windows executable of
cloc is to use [ActiveState's Perl Development Kit](http://www.activestate.com/perl-dev-kit).
It includes a utility, `perlapp`, which can build stand-alone
Windows, Mac, and Linux binaries of Perl source code.

[perl2exe](http://www.indigostar.com/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:

<pre>
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-2.08.exe cloc-2.08.pl
</pre>

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, <tt>cloc-2.08.exe</tt>,
was built on a 64 bit Windows 11 computer using
[Strawberry Perl](http://strawberryperl.com/)
5.32.1 and
[PAR::Packer](http://search.cpan.org/~rschupp/PAR-Packer-1.064/lib/pp.pm)
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-2.08.exe:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/4529557d957ade0dd45746eae10e9c51ee01061bb617eeeab256672faf6e42c6?nocache=1

cloc-2.06.exe:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/bbe48de9102d0f2520d292d65897001c1d068340eb7cd74dd1ee30c1a9091c4a?nocache=1

cloc-2.04.exe:
https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/89cda0038bf4e13c6c13ebc1e60bec4dfad362e69ac8a5b8e2d5ebe3020359e1

cloc-2.02-winget.exe:  (includes [PR 850](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/pull/850) to allow
[running from a symlink on Windows](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues/849))
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

#### 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.

[](1}}})
<a name="Basic_Use"></a> []({{{1)
# [Basic Use &#9650;](#___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:

<pre>
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

</pre>

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.
[](1}}})
<a name="GUI_Frontends"></a> []({{{1)
# [GUI Frontends &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

Several GUI frontends to cloc are available:

* [cloctui](https://github.com/edward-jazzhands/cloctui)
* [ClocViewer](https://github.com/Roemer/ClocViewer)
* [codeflower](https://github.com/jmensch1/codeflower)

[](1}}})
<a name="Options"></a> []({{{1)
# [Options &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

<pre>
prompt> cloc --help

Usage: cloc [options] &lt;file(s)/dir(s)/git hash(es)&gt; | &lt;set 1&gt; &lt;set 2&gt; | &lt;report files&gt;

 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=&lt;cmd&gt;      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 &lt;cmd&gt; to extract binary archive files (e.g.:
                             .tar.gz, .zip, .Z).  Use the literal '&gt;FILE&lt;' 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 &gt;FILE&lt; | tar xf -'
                             or, if you have GNU tar,
                               --extract-with='tar zxf &gt;FILE&lt;'
                             and on Windows use, for example:
                               --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe\" -e -o &gt;FILE&lt; ."
                             (if WinZip is installed there).
   --list-file=&lt;file&gt;        Take the list of file and/or directory names to
                             process from &lt;file&gt;, 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 &lt;file&gt;
                             to - to read file names from a STDIN pipe.
                             See also --exclude-list-file.
   --diff-list-file=&lt;file&gt;   Take the pairs of file names to be diff'ed from
                             &lt;file&gt;, 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=&lt;VCS&gt;               Invoke a system call to &lt;VCS&gt; to obtain a list of
                             files to work on.  If &lt;VCS&gt; 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 &lt;VCS&gt; 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 &lt;VCS&gt; 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 &lt;VCS&gt;.  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 &lt;VCS&gt; to 'auto' selects between 'git'
                             and 'svn' (or neither) depending on the presence
                             of a .git or .svn subdirectory below the directory
                             where cloc is invoked.  --files-from is a synonym
                             for --vcs.
   --unicode                 Check binary files to see if they contain Unicode
                             expanded ASCII text.  This causes performance to
                             drop noticeably.

 Processing Options
   --autoconf                Count .in files (as processed by GNU autoconf) of
                             recognized languages.  See also --no-autogen.
   --by-file                 Report results for every source file encountered.
   --by-file-by-lang         Report results for every source file encountered
                             in addition to reporting by language.
   --config &lt;file&gt;           Read command line switches from &lt;file&gt; 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 &lt;set1&gt; &lt;set2&gt;
                             First perform direct code counts of source file(s)
                             of &lt;set1&gt; and &lt;set2&gt; 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 &lt;set1&gt; &lt;set2&gt;      Compute differences in code and comments between
                             source file(s) of &lt;set1&gt; and &lt;set2&gt;.  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 &lt;N&gt;        Ignore files which take more than &lt;N&gt; seconds
                             to process.  Default is 10 seconds.  Setting &lt;N&gt;
                             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=&lt;lang&gt;[,&lt;ext&gt;]
                             Process all files that have a &lt;ext&gt; extension
                             with the counter for language &lt;lang&gt;.  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 &lt;ext&gt; is omitted, every file will be counted
                             with the &lt;lang&gt; counter.  This option can be
                             specified multiple times (but that is only
                             useful when &lt;ext&gt; is given each time).
                             See also --script-lang, --lang-no-ext.
   --force-lang-def=&lt;file&gt;   Load language processing filters from &lt;file&gt;,
                             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=&lt;lang&gt;      Count files without extensions using the &lt;lang&gt;
                             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=&lt;MB&gt;      Skip files larger than &lt;MB&gt; megabytes when
                             traversing directories.  By default, &lt;MB&gt;=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=&lt;file&gt;    Load new language processing filters from &lt;file&gt;
                             and merge them with those already known to cloc.
                             If &lt;file&gt; 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=&lt;lang&gt;,&lt;s&gt;  Process all files that invoke &lt;s&gt; as a #!
                             scripting language with the counter for language
                             &lt;lang&gt;.  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, &lt;s&gt;,
                             must have the right case.  This option can be
                             specified multiple times.  See also --force-lang,
                             --lang-no-ext.
   --sdir=&lt;dir&gt;              Use &lt;dir&gt; 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=&lt;file&gt;       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=&lt;ext&gt;    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 .&lt;ext&gt; 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 &lt;N&gt;             Ignore files which take more than &lt;N&gt; 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 &lt;N&gt; 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=&lt;regex&gt; Only count files containing text that matches the
                             given regular expression.
   --exclude-content=&lt;regex&gt; Exclude files containing text that matches the given
                             regular expression.
   --exclude-dir=&lt;D1&gt;[,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=&lt;regex&gt;
                             to supply a regex matching multiple subdirectories.
   --exclude-ext=&lt;ext1&gt;[,&lt;ext2&gt;[...]]
                             Do not count files having the given file name
                             extensions.
   --exclude-lang=&lt;L1&gt;[,L2[...]]
                             Exclude the given comma separated languages
                             L1, L2, L3, et cetera, from being counted.
   --exclude-list-file=&lt;file&gt;  Ignore files and/or directories whose names
                             appear in &lt;file&gt;.  &lt;file&gt; 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=&lt;ext1&gt;[,ext2[...]]
                             Count only languages having the given comma
                             separated file extensions.  Use --show-ext to
                             see the recognized extensions.
   --include-lang=&lt;L1&gt;[,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=&lt;regex&gt;         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=&lt;regex&gt;     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=&lt;regex&gt;         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=&lt;regex&gt;     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=&lt;regex&gt;    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=&lt;file&gt;      Save file sizes in bytes, identified languages
                             and names of categorized files to &lt;file&gt;.
   --counted=&lt;file&gt;          Save names of processed source files to &lt;file&gt;.
   --diff-alignment=&lt;file&gt;   Write to &lt;file&gt; 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=&lt;lang&gt;          Print the filters used to remove comments for
                             language &lt;lang&gt; 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=&lt;file&gt;            Save names of every file found to &lt;file&gt;.
   --ignored=&lt;file&gt;          Save names of ignored files and the reason they
                             were ignored to &lt;file&gt;.
   --print-filter-stages     Print processed source code before and after
                             each filter is applied.
   --show-ext[=&lt;ext&gt;]        Print information about all known (or just the
                             given) file extensions and exit.
   --show-lang[=&lt;lang&gt;]      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[=&lt;n&gt;]                  Verbose switch (optional numeric value).
   -verbose[=&lt;n&gt;]            Long form of -v.
   --version                 Print the version of this program and exit.
   --write-lang-def=&lt;file&gt;   Writes to &lt;file&gt; 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=&lt;file&gt;
                             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'   -&gt; # lines of code
                                X = 'cm'  -&gt; # lines of code + comments
                                X = 'cb'  -&gt; # lines of code + blanks
                                X = 'cmb' -&gt; # 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=&lt;C&gt;       Use the character &lt;C&gt; as the delimiter for comma
                             separated files instead of ,.  This switch forces --csv to be on.
   --file-encoding=&lt;E&gt;       Write output files using the &lt;E&gt; encoding instead of
                             the default ASCII (&lt;E&gt; = 'UTF-7').  Examples: 'UTF-16',
                             'euc-kr', 'iso-8859-16'.  Known encodings can be
                             printed with
                               perl -MEncode -e 'print join("\n", Encode-&gt;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=&lt;file&gt;              Synonym for --report-file=&lt;file&gt;.
   --percent                 Show counts as percentages of sums for each column.
                             Same as '--by-percent t'.
   --progress-rate=&lt;n&gt;       Show progress update after every &lt;n&gt; files are
                             processed (default &lt;n&gt;=100).  Set &lt;n&gt; to 0 to
                             suppress progress output (useful when redirecting
                             output to STDOUT).
   --quiet                   Suppress all information messages except for
                             the final report.
   --report-file=&lt;file&gt;      Write the results to &lt;file&gt; instead of STDOUT.
   --sql=&lt;file&gt;              Write results as SQL create and insert statements
                             which can be read by a database program such as
                             SQLite.  If &lt;file&gt; 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=&lt;name&gt;      Use &lt;name&gt; as the project identifier for the
                             current run.  Only valid with the --sql option.
   --sql-style=&lt;style&gt;       Write SQL statements in the given style instead
                             of the default SQLite format.  Styles include
                             'Oracle' and 'Named_Columns'.
   --sum-one                 For plain text reports, show the SUM: output line
                             even if only one input file is processed.
   --thousands-delimiter=&lt;C&gt; Divides numbers with many digits (i.e. numbers
                             over 999) into groups using the character <C> as
                             delimiter (e.g. for <C> = '.': 12345 -> 12.345).
                             Only works with the '--fmt' option.
                             Sample values: '.', ',', '_', ' '
                             Synonym:  --ksep
   --xml                     Write the results in XML.
   --xsl=&lt;file&gt;              Reference &lt;file&gt; as an XSL stylesheet within
                             the XML output.  If &lt;file&gt; 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.
</pre>
[](1}}})
<a name="Languages"></a> []({{{1)
# [Recognized Languages &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

<pre>
prompt> cloc --show-lang

Language                   Extension(s)
--------------------       ----------------------------------------
ABAP                       (abap)
ActionScript               (as)
Activiti Business Process  (bpmn)
Ada                        (ada, adb, ads, pad)
ADSO/IDSM                  (adso)
Agda                       (agda, lagda)
AMPLE                      (ample, dofile, startup)
AnsProlog                  (lp)
Ant                        (build.xml, build.xml)
ANTLR Grammar              (g, g4)
Apex Class                 (cls)
Apex Trigger               (trigger)
APL                        (apl, apla, aplc, aplf, apli, apln, aplo, dyalog, dyapp, mipage)
AppleScript                (applescript)
Arduino Sketch             (ino)
Aria                       (aria)
ArkTs                      (ets)
Arturo                     (art)
AsciiDoc                   (adoc, asciidoc)
ASP                        (asa, ashx, asp, axd)
ASP.NET                    (asax, ascx, asmx, aspx, master, sitemap, webinfo)
AspectJ                    (aj)
Assembly                   (a51, asm, nasm, S, s)
Astro                      (astro)
Asymptote                  (asy)
AutoHotkey                 (ahk, ahkl)
awk                        (auk, awk, gawk, mawk, nawk)
AXAML                      (axaml)
Bazel                      (BUILD)
Bicep                      (bicep, bicepparam)
BitBake                    (bb, bbappend, bbclass)
BizTalk Orchestration      (odx)
BizTalk Pipeline           (btp)
Blade                      (blade, blade.php)
Blueprint                  (blp)
Bourne Again Shell         (bash)
Bourne Shell               (sh)
BrightScript               (brs)
builder                    (xml.builder)
C                          (c, cats, ec, idc, pgc)
C Shell                    (csh, tcsh)
C#                         (cs)
C# Designer                (designer.cs)
C++                        (C, c++, c++m, cc, ccm, CPP, cpp, cppm, cxx, cxxm, h++, inl, ipp,
                            ixx, pcc, tcc, tpp)
C/C++ Header               (H, h, hh, hpp, hxx)
Cadence                    (cdc)
Cairo                      (cairo)
Cake Build Script          (cake)
Cangjie                    (cj)
Carbon                     (carbon)
CCS                        (ccs)
Chapel                     (chpl)
Circom                     (circom)
Civet                      (civet, cvt, cvtx)
Clarity                    (clar)
Clean                      (dcl, icl)
Clojure                    (boot, cl2, clj, cljs.hl, cljscm, cljx, hic, riemann.config, cj)
ClojureC                   (cljc)
ClojureScript              (cljs)
CMake                      (cmake, cmake.in, CMakeLists.txt)
COBOL                      (CBL, cbl, ccp, COB, cob, cobol, cpy)
CoCoA 5                    (c5, cocoa5, cocoa5server, cpkg5)
CoffeeScript               (_coffee, cakefile, cjsx, coffee, iced)
ColdFusion                 (cfm, cfml)
ColdFusion CFScript        (cfc)
Constraint Grammar         (cg3, rlx)
Containerfile              (Containerfile)
Coq                        (v)
Crystal                    (cr)
CSON                       (cson)
CSS                        (css)
CSV                        (csv)
Cucumber                   (feature)
CUDA                       (cu, cuh)
Cython                     (pxd, pxi, pyx)
D                          (d)
Dafny                      (dfy)
DAL                        (da)
Dart                       (dart)
Delphi Form                (dfm)
DenizenScript              (dsc)
Derw                       (derw)
dhall                      (dhall)
DIET                       (dt)
diff                       (diff, patch)
DITA                       (dita)
Dockerfile                 (Dockerfile, dockerfile)
DOORS Extension Language   (dxl)
DOS Batch                  (BAT, bat, BTM, btm, CMD, cmd)
Drools                     (drl)
DTD                        (dtd)
dtrace                     (d)
ECPP                       (ecpp)
EEx                        (eex)
EJS                        (ejs)
Elixir                     (ex)
Elixir Script              (exs)
Elm                        (elm)
Embedded Crystal           (ecr)
ERB                        (ERB, erb)
Erlang                     (app.src, emakefile, erl, hrl, rebar.config, rebar.config.lock,
                            rebar.lock, xrl, yrl)
Expect                     (exp)
F#                         (fsi, fs, fs)
F# Script                  (fsx)
Fennel                     (fnl)
Finite State Language      (fsl, jssm)
Fish Shell                 (fish)
Flatbuffers                (fbs)
Focus                      (focexec)
Forth                      (4th, e4, f83, fb, forth, fpm, fr, frt, ft, fth, rx, fs, f, for)
Fortran 2003               (F03, f03)
Fortran 77                 (F, F77, f77, FOR, FTN, ftn, pfo, f, for)
Fortran 90                 (F90, f90)
Fortran 95                 (F95, f95)
Freemarker Template        (ftl)
Futhark                    (fut)
FXML                       (fxml)
GDScript                   (gd)
Gencat NLS                 (msg)
Glade                      (glade, ui)
Gleam                      (gleam)
Glimmer JavaScript         (gjs)
Glimmer TypeScript         (gts)
GLSL                       (comp, fp, frag, frg, fsh, fshader, geo, geom, glsl, glslv, gshader,
                            tesc, tese, vert, vrx, vsh, vshader)
Go                         (go, ʕ◔ϖ◔ʔ)
Godot Resource             (tres)
Godot Scene                (tscn)
Godot Shaders              (gdshader)
Gradle                     (gradle, gradle.kts)
Grails                     (gsp)
GraphQL                    (gql, graphql, graphqls)
Groovy                     (gant, groovy, grt, gtpl, gvy, jenkinsfile)
Haml                       (haml, haml.deface)
Handlebars                 (handlebars, hbs)
Harbour                    (hb)
Hare                       (ha)
Haskell                    (hs, hsc, lhs)
Haskell Boot               (hs-boot, lhs-boot)
Haxe                       (hx, hxsl)
HCL                        (hcl, nomad, tf, tfvars)
Hibernate                  (hbm.xml)
HLSL                       (cg, cginc, fxh, hlsl, hlsli, shader)
HolyC                      (HC)
Hoon                       (hoon)
HTML                       (htm, html, html.hl, xht)
HTML EEx                   (heex)
IDL                        (dlm, idl, pro)
Idris                      (idr)
Igor Pro                   (ipf)
Imba                       (imba)
INI                        (buildozer.spec, editorconfig, ini, lektorproject, prefs)
InstallShield              (ism)
IPL                        (ipl)
Jai                        (jai)
Janet                      (janet)
Jasper Report XML/Template (jrxml)
Java                       (java)
JavaScript                 (_js, bones, cjs, es6, jake, jakefile, js, jsb, jscad, jsfl, jsm,
                            jss, mjs, njs, pac, sjs, ssjs, xsjs, xsjslib)
JavaServer Faces           (jsf)
JCL                        (jcl)
Jinja Template             (j2, jinja, jinja2)
JSON                       (arcconfig, avsc, composer.lock, geojson, gltf, har, htmlhintrc,
                            json, json-tmlanguage, jsonl, mcmeta, mcmod.info, tern-config,
                            tern-project, tfstate, tfstate.backup, topojson, watchmanconfig,
                            webapp, webmanifest, yyp)
JSON5                      (json5)
Jsonnet                    (jsonnet)
JSP                        (jsp, jspf)
JSP Tag Library Definition (tld)
JSX                        (jsx)
Julia                      (jl)
Juniper Junos              (junos)
Jupyter Notebook           (ipynb)
Justfile                   (just)
Kermit                     (ksc)
Korn Shell                 (ksh)
Kotlin                     (kt, ktm, kts)
kvlang                     (kv)
Lean                       (hlean, lean)
Lem                        (lem)
LESS                       (less)
lex                        (l, lex)
LFE                        (lfe)
Linker Script              (ld)
Liquibase                  (lb.xml)
liquid                     (liquid)
Lisp                       (asd, el, lisp, lsp, cl, jl)
Literate Idris             (lidr)
LiveLink OScript           (oscript)
LLVM IR                    (ll)
Logos                      (x, xm)
Logtalk                    (lgt, logtalk)
Lua                        (lua, nse, p8, pd_lua, rbxs, wlua)
Luau                       (luau)
m4                         (ac, m4)
Magik                      (magik)
make                       (am, Gnumakefile, gnumakefile, Makefile, makefile, mk)
Mako                       (mako, mao)
Markdown                   (contents.lr, markdown, md, mdown, mdwn, mdx, mkd, mkdn, mkdown,
                            ronn, workbook)
Mathematica                (cdf, ma, mathematica, mt, nbp, wl, wlt, m)
MATLAB                     (m)
Maven                      (pom, pom.xml)
Meson                      (meson.build)
Metal                      (metal)
Modelica                   (mo)
Modula3                    (i3, ig, m3, mg)
Mojo                       (mojo, 🔥)
Mojom                      (mojom)
MoonBit                    (mbt, mbti, mbtx, mbty)
MSBuild script             (btproj, csproj, msbuild, vcproj, wdproj, wixproj)
MUMPS                      (mps, m)
Mustache                   (mustache)
MXML                       (mxml)
NAnt script                (build)
NASTRAN DMAP               (dmap)
Nemerle                    (n)
NetLogo                    (nlogo, nls)
Nextflow                   (nf)
Nickel                     (ncl)
Nim                        (nim, nim.cfg, nimble, nimrod, nims)
Nix                        (nix)
Nunjucks                   (njk)
Nushell                    (nu)
Nushell Object Notation    (nuon)
Objective-C                (m)
Objective-C++              (mm)
OCaml                      (eliom, eliomi, ml, ml4, mli, mll, mly)
Odin                       (odin)
OpenCL                     (cl)
OpenSCAD                   (scad)
Oracle Forms               (fmt)
Oracle PL/SQL              (bdy, bod, fnc, prc, spc, trg)
Oracle Reports             (rex)
Org Mode                   (org)
P4                         (p4)
Pascal                     (dpr, lpr, pas, pascal)
Pascal/Pawn                (p)
Pascal/Puppet              (pp)
Patran Command Language    (pcl, ses)
Pawn                       (pawn, pwn)
PEG                        (peg)
peg.js                     (pegjs)
peggy                      (peggy)
Pek                        (pek)
Perl                       (ack, al, cpanfile, makefile.pl, perl, ph, plh, plx, pm, psgi,
                            rexfile, pl, p6)
Pest                       (pest)
PHP                        (aw, ctp, phakefile, php, php3, php4, php5, php_cs, php_cs.dist, phps,
                            phpt, phtml)
PHP/Pascal/Fortran/Pawn/BitBake (inc)
Pig Latin                  (pig)
Pkl                        (pkl)
PL/I                       (pl1)
PL/M                       (lit, plm)
PlantUML                   (iuml, plantuml, pu, puml, wsd)
PO File                    (po)
Pony                       (pony)
PowerBuilder               (pbt, sra, srf, srm, srs, sru, srw)
PowerShell                 (ps1, psd1, psm1)
Prisma Schema              (prisma)
Processing                 (pde)
ProGuard                   (pro)
Prolog                     (P, prolog, yap, pl, p6, pro)
Properties                 (properties)
Protocol Buffers           (proto)
PRQL                       (prql)
Pug                        (jade, pug)
PureScript                 (purs)
Python                     (buck, build.bazel, gclient, gyp, gypi, lmi, py, py3, pyde, pyi, pyp,
                            pyt, pyw, sconscript, sconstruct, snakefile, tac, workspace, wscript,
                            wsgi, xpy)
QML                        (qbs, qml)
Qt Linguist                (ts)
Qt Project                 (pro)
R                          (expr-dist, R, r, rd, rprofile, rsx)
Racket                     (rkt, rktd, rktl, scrbl)
Raku                       (pm6, raku, rakumod)
Raku/Prolog                (P6, p6)
RAML                       (raml)
RapydScript                (pyj)
Razor                      (cshtml, razor)
ReasonML                   (re, rei)
Rego                       (rego)
ReScript                   (res, resi)
reStructuredText           (rest, rest.txt, rst, rst.txt)
Rexx                       (pprx, rexx)
Ring                       (rform, rh, ring)
Rmd                        (Rmd)
RobotFramework             (robot)
Ruby                       (appraisals, berksfile, brewfile, builder, buildfile, capfile,
                            dangerfile, deliverfile, eye, fastfile, gemfile, gemfile.lock,
                            gemspec, god, guardfile, irbrc, jarfile, jbuilder, mavenfile,
                            mspec, podfile, podspec, pryrc, puppetfile, rabl, rake, rb,
                            rbuild, rbw, rbx, ru, snapfile, thor, thorfile, vagrantfile, watchr)
Ruby HTML                  (rhtml)
Rust                       (rs, rs.in)
SaltStack                  (sls)
SAS                        (sas)
Sass                       (sass)
Scala                      (kojo, sbt, scala)
Scheme                     (sc, sch, scm, sld, sps, ss, sls)
SCSS                       (scss)
sed                        (sed)
SKILL++                    (ils)
SKILL/.NET IL              (il)
Slice                      (ice)
Slim                       (slim)
Slint                      (slint)
Smalltalk                  (st, cs)
Smarty                     (smarty, tpl)
Snakemake                  (rules, smk)
Softbridge Basic           (SBL, sbl)
Solidity                   (sol)
SparForte                  (sp)
Specman e                  (e)
SQL                        (cql, mysql, psql, SQL, sql, tab, udf, viw)
SQL Data                   (data.sql)
SQL Stored Procedure       (spc.sql, spoc.sql, sproc.sql, udf.sql)
Squirrel                   (nut)
Standard ML                (fun, sig, sml)
Starlark                   (bazel, bzl)
Stata                      (ado, DO, do, doh, ihlp, mata, matah, sthlp)
Stylus                     (styl)
SugarSS                    (sss)
SurrealQL                  (surql)
Svelte                     (svelte)
SVG                        (SVG, svg)
Swift                      (swift)
SWIG                       (i)
TableGen                   (td)
Tcl/Tk                     (itk, tcl, tk)
TEAL                       (teal)
Teamcenter met             (met)
Teamcenter mth             (mth)
Templ                      (templ)
TeX                        (aux, bbx, bib, bst, cbx, dtx, ins, lbx, ltx, mkii, mkiv, mkvi,
                            sty, tex, cls)
Text                       (text, txt)
Thrift                     (thrift)
TITAN Project File Information (tpd)
Titanium Style Sheet       (tss)
TLA+                       (tla)
TNSDL                      (cii, cin, in1, in2, in3, in4, inf, interface, rou, sdl, sdt,
                            spd, ssc, sst)
TOML                       (toml)
tspeg                      (jspeg, tspeg)
TTCN                       (ttcn, ttcn2, ttcn3, ttcnpp)
Twig                       (twig)
TypeScript                 (cts, mts, tsx, ts)
Typst                      (typ)
Umka                       (um)
Unity-Prefab               (mat, prefab)
Unknown/BitBake            (conf)
USS                        (uss)
UXML                       (uxml)
Vala                       (vala)
Vala Header                (vapi)
VBA                        (VBA, vba)
VBScript                   (VBS, vbs)
Velocity Template Language (vm)
Verilog-SystemVerilog      (sv, svh, v)
VHDL                       (VHD, vhd, VHDL, vhdl, vhf, vhi, vho, vhs, vht, vhw)
vim script                 (vim)
Visual Basic               (BAS, bas, ctl, Dsr, dsr, frm, FRX, frx, vbp, vbw, cls)
Visual Basic .NET          (VB, vb, VBHTML, vbhtml, vbproj)
Visual Fox Pro             (SCA, sca)
Visual Studio Solution     (sln)
Visualforce Component      (component)
Visualforce Page           (page)
VSCode Workspace           (code-workspace)
Vuejs Component            (vue)
Vyper                      (vy)
Web Services Description   (wsdl)
WebAssembly                (wast, wat)
WGSL                       (wgsl)
Windows Message File       (mc)
Windows Module Definition  (def)
Windows Resource File      (rc, rc2)
WiX include                (wxi)
WiX source                 (wxs)
WiX string localization    (wxl)
WXML                       (wxml)
WXSS                       (wxss)
X++                        (xpo)
XAML                       (xaml)
xBase                      (prg, prw)
xBase Header               (ch)
XHTML                      (xhtml)
XMI                        (XMI, xmi)
XML                        (adml, admx, ant, app.config, axml, builds, ccproj, ccxml,
                            classpath, clixml, cproject, cscfg, csdef, csl, ct, depproj,
                            ditamap, ditaval, dll.config, dotsettings, filters, fsproj,
                            gmx, grxml, iml, ivy, jelly, jsproj, kml, launch, mdpolicy,
                            mjml, natvis, ndproj, nproj, nuget.config, nuspec, odd, osm,
                            packages.config, pkgproj, plist, proj, project, props, ps1xml,
                            psc1, pt, rdf, resx, rss, scxml, settings.stylecop, sfproj,
                            shproj, srdf, storyboard, sttheme, sublime-snippet, targets,
                            tmcommand, tml, tmlanguage, tmpreferences, tmsnippet, tmtheme,
                            urdf, ux, vcxproj, vsixmanifest, vssettings, vstemplate, vxml,
                            web.config, web.debug.config, web.release.config, wsf, x3d,
                            xacro, xib, xlf, xliff, XML, xml, xml.dist, xproj, xspec, xul,
                            zcml)
XML-Qt-GTK                 (ui)
XQuery                     (xq, xql, xqm, xquery, xqy)
XSD                        (XSD, xsd)
XSLT                       (XSL, xsl, XSLT, xslt)
Xtend                      (xtend)
yacc                       (y, yacc)
YAML                       (clang-format, clang-tidy, gemrc, glide.lock, mir, reek, rviz,
                            sublime-syntax, syntax, yaml, yaml-tmlanguage, yml, yml.mysql)
Yang                       (yang)
Yarn                       (yarn)
Zig                        (zig)
zsh                        (zsh)
</pre>

The above list can be customized by reading language definitions from a
file with the `--read-lang-def` or `--force-lang-def` options.

These file extensions map to multiple languages:

*   `cj`  files could be Clojure or Cangjie
*   `cl`  files could be Lisp or OpenCL
*   `cls` files could be Visual Basic, TeX or Apex Class
*   `conf` files could be BitBake or plain text
*   `cs`  files could be C# or Smalltalk
*   `d`   files could be D or dtrace
*   `f`   files could be Fortran 77 or Forth
*   `fnc` files could be Oracle PL or SQL
*   `for` files could be Fortran 77 or Forth
*   `fs`  files could be F# or Forth
*   `inc` files could be PHP, Pascal or BitBake
*   `itk` files could be Tcl or Tk
*   `jl`  files could be Lisp or Julia
*   `lit` files could be PL or M
*   `m`   files could be MATLAB, Mathematica, Objective-C, MUMPS or Mercury
*   `p6`  files could be Perl or Prolog
*   `pl`  files could be Perl or Prolog
*   `PL`  files could be Perl or Prolog
*   `pp`  files could be Pascal or Puppet
*   `pro` files could be IDL, Qt Project, Prolog or ProGuard
*   `ts`  files could be TypeScript or Qt Linguist
*   `ui`  files could be Qt or Glade
*   `v`   files could be Verilog-SystemVerilog or Coq

cloc has subroutines that attempt to identify the correct language based
on the file's contents for these special cases. Language identification
accuracy is a function of how much code the file contains; .m files with
just one or two lines for example, seldom have enough information to
correctly distinguish between MATLAB, Mercury, MUMPS, or Objective-C.

Languages with file extension collisions are difficult to customize with
`--read-lang-def` or `--force-lang-def` as they have no mechanism to
identify languages with common extensions. In this situation one must
modify the cloc source code.
[](1}}})
<a name="How_it_works"></a> []({{{1)
# [How It Works &#9650;](#___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:

1.  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.)
2.  Use File::Find to recursively descend the input directories and make
    a list of candidate file names. Ignore binary and zero-sized files.
3.  Make sure the files in the candidate list have unique contents
    (first by comparing file sizes, then, for similarly sized files,
    compare MD5 hashes of the file contents with Digest::MD5). For each
    set of identical files, remove all but the first copy, as determined
    by a lexical sort, of identical files from the set. The removed
    files are not included in the report. (The `--skip-uniqueness` switch
    disables the uniqueness tests and forces all copies of files to be
    included in the report.) See also the `--ignored=` switch to see which
    files were ignored and why.
4.  Scan the candidate file list for file extensions which cloc
    associates with programming languages (see the `--show-lang` and
    `--show-ext` options). Files which match are classified as
    containing source
    code for that language. Each file without an extension is opened
    and its first line read to see if it is a Unix shell script
    (anything that begins with #!). If it is shell script, the file is
    classified by that scripting language (if the language is
    recognized). If the file does not have a recognized extension or is
    not a recognized scripting language, the file is ignored.
5.  All remaining files in the candidate list should now be source files
    for known programming languages. For each of these files:

    1.  Read the entire file into memory.
    2.  Count the number of lines (= L<sub>original</sub>).
    3.  Remove blank lines, then count again (= L<sub>non_blank</sub>).
    4.  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 (= L<sub>code</sub>).
    5.  Save the counts for this language:
        * blank lines = L<sub>original</sub> - L<sub>non_blank</sub>
        * comment lines = L<sub>non_blank</sub> - L<sub>code</sub>
        * code lines = L<sub>code</sub>

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.
[](1}}})
<a name="Advanced_Use"></a> []({{{1)
# [Advanced Use &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
[](1}}})
<a name="strip_comments"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Remove Comments from Source Code &#9650;](#___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:

<pre>
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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

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:

<pre>
prompt> wc -l sqlite3.c sqlite3.c.nc
  82895 sqlite3.c
  50901 sqlite3.c.nc
 133796 total
prompt> echo "82895 - 50901" | bc
31994
</pre>

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:

<pre>
prompt> gcc -c sqlite3.c
prompt> md5sum sqlite3.o
cce5f1a2ea27c7e44b2e1047e2588b49  sqlite3.o
</pre>

Next, the version without comments:

<pre>
prompt> mv sqlite3.c.nc sqlite3.c
prompt> gcc -c sqlite3.c
prompt> md5sum sqlite3.o
cce5f1a2ea27c7e44b2e1047e2588b49  sqlite3.o
</pre>

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.
[](1}}})
<a name="compressed_arch"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Work with Compressed Archives &#9650;](#___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`,
`.deb`.
Some of these extensions work on Windows if one has WinZip installed
in the default location (`C:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe`).
Additionally, with newer versions of WinZip, the
[http://www.winzip.com/downcl.htm](command line add-on)
is needed for correct operation; in this case one would invoke cloc with
something like <br>
<pre>
 --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\wzunzip\" -e -o &gt;FILE&lt; ."
 </code>
</pre>
Ref. http://sourceforge.net/projects/cloc/forums/forum/600963/topic/4021070?message=8938196

In situations where the automatic extraction fails, one can try the
`--extract-with=CMD`
option to count lines of code within tar files, Zip files, or
other compressed archives for which one has an extraction tool.
cloc takes the user-provided extraction command and expands the archive
to a temporary directory (created with File::Temp),
counts the lines of code in the temporary directory,
then removes that directory.  While not especially helpful when dealing
with a single compressed archive (after all, if you're going to type
the extraction command anyway why not just manually expand the archive?)
this option is handy for working with several archives at once.

For example, say you have the following source tarballs on a Unix machine<br>

    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
<pre>
cloc --extract-with='gzip -dc &gt;FILE&lt; | tar xf -' perl-5.8.5.tar.gz Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
</pre>
If that Unix machine has GNU tar (which can uncompress and extract in
one step) the command can be shortened to
<pre>
cloc --extract-with='tar zxf &gt;FILE&lt;' perl-5.8.5.tar.gz Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
</pre>
On a Windows computer with WinZip installed in
`c:\Program Files\WinZip` the command would look like
<pre>
cloc.exe --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe\" -e -o &gt;FILE&lt; ." perl-5.8.5.tar.gz Python-2.4.2.tar.gz
</pre>
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:
<pre>
<i>Unix&gt;</i> cloc --extract-with="unzip -d . &gt;FILE&lt; " Project.ear
<i>DOS&gt;</i> cloc.exe --extract-with="\"c:\Program Files\WinZip\WinZip32.exe\" -e -o &gt;FILE&lt; ." Project.ear
</pre>

[](1}}})
<a name="diff"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Differences &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
The `--diff` switch allows one to measure the relative change in
source code and comments between two versions of a file, directory,
or archive.  Differences reveal much more than absolute code
counts of two file versions.  For example, say a source file
has 100 lines and its developer delivers a newer version with
102 lines.  Did the developer add two comment lines,
or delete seventeen source
lines and add fourteen source lines and five comment lines, or did
the developer
do a complete rewrite, discarding all 100 original lines and
adding 102 lines of all new source?  The diff option tells how
many lines of source were added, removed, modified or stayed
the same, and how many lines of comments were added, removed,
modified or stayed the same.

Differences in blank lines are handled much more coarsely
because these are stripped by cloc early on.  Unless a
file pair is identical, cloc will report only differences
in absolute counts of blank lines.  In other words, one
can expect to see only entries for 'added' if the second
file has more blanks than the first, and 'removed' if the
situation is reversed.  The entry for 'same' will be non-zero
only when the two files are identical.

In addition to file pairs, one can give cloc pairs of
directories, or pairs of file archives, or a file archive
and a directory.  cloc will try to align
file pairs within the directories or archives and compare diffs
for each pair.  For example, to see what changed between
GCC 4.4.0 and 4.5.0 one could do
<pre>
cloc --diff gcc-4.4.0.tar.bz2  gcc-4.5.0.tar.bz2
</pre>

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
<pre>
cloc --diff-alignment=align.txt gcc-4.4.0.tar.bz2  gcc-4.5.0.tar.bz2
</pre>
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:
<pre><i>prompt&gt;</i> 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>
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.

[](1}}})
<a name="custom_lang"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Create Custom Language Definitions &#9650;](#___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:
<pre><i>Unix&gt;</i> cloc --write-lang-def=my_definitions.txt
</pre>
creates the file `my_definitions.txt` which can be modified
then read back in with either the `--read-lang-def` or
`--force-lang-def` option.  The difference between the options is
former merges language definitions from the given file in with
cloc's internal definitions with cloc's taking precedence
if there are overlaps.  The `--force-lang-def` option, on the
other hand, replaces cloc's definitions completely.
This option has a disadvantage in preventing cloc from counting
<a class="u" href="#extcollision" name="extcollision">
languages whose extensions map to multiple languages
</a> as these languages require additional logic that is not easily
expressed in a definitions file.
<pre><i>Unix&gt;</i> cloc --read-lang-def=my_definitions.txt  <i>file1 file2 dir1 ...</i>
</pre>

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
<pre>C++
    filter call_regexp_common C++
    filter remove_inline //.*$
    extension C
    extension c++
    extension cc
    extension cpp
    extension cxx
    extension pcc
    3rd_gen_scale 1.51
    end_of_line_continuation \\$
</pre>
C++ has two filters:  first, remove lines matching
Regexp::Common's C++ comment regex.
The second filter using remove_inline is currently
unused.  Its intent is to identify lines with both
code and comments and it may be implemented in the future.

A more complete discussion of the different filter options may appear
here in the future.  The output of cloc's
`--write-lang-def` option should provide enough examples
for motivated individuals to modify or extend cloc's language definitions.

[](1}}})
<a name="combine_reports"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Combine Reports &#9650;](#___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, the MariaDB team does

<pre>cloc --out mariadb-10.1.txt mariadb-server-10.1.zip</pre>

and provides you with the file `mariadb-10.1.txt`.
The contents of the three files you get are

<pre>
<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

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:

<pre>
<i>Unix&gt;</i> cloc --sum-reports --out=databases mariadb-10.1.txt  sqlite-3081101.txt  postgresql-9.4.4.txt
Wrote databases.lang
Wrote databases.file
</pre>

The report combination produces two output files, one for sums by
programming language (`databases.lang`) and one by project
(`databases.file`).
Their contents are
<pre><i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

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:

<pre>
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
</pre>

then sum these together with

<pre>
<i>Unix&gt;</i> cloc --sum-reports --out script_lang perl-5.22.0.txt python-2.7.10.txt
Wrote script_lang.lang
Wrote script_lang.file

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

Finally, combine the combination files:

<pre>
<i>Unix&gt;</i> cloc --sum-reports --report_file=everything databases.lang script_lang.lang
Wrote everything.lang
Wrote everything.file

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<i>Unix&gt;</i> 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
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
</pre>

One limitation of the `--sum-reports` feature is that the individual counts must
be saved in the plain text format.  Counts saved as
XML, JSON, YAML, or SQL will produce errors if used in a summation.

[](1}}})
<a name="sql"></a> []({{{1)
##  [SQL &#9650;](#___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                |
|----------|---------------------|
|id        | integer primary key |
|timestamp | text                |
|project   | text                |
|elapsed_s | text                |

Table **t**:

|Field             | Type                     |
|------------------|--------------------------|
| project          |text                      |
| language         |text                      |
| file             |text                      |
| nBlank           |integer                   |
| nComment         |integer                   |
| nCode            |integer                   |
| nScaled          |real                      |
| foreign key (id) | references metadata (id) |

The **metadata** table contains information about when the cloc run
was made.  Run time is stored two ways: as Unix epoch
seconds in `id` and as an ISO 8601 formatted text string
in the local time zone
(for example `2024-03-01 14:19:41`) in `timestamp`.
The `--sql-append` switch allows one to combine
many runs in a single database; each run adds a
row to the metadata table.
The code count information resides in table **t**.
The `id` key makes it easy to associate a run's code count with
its metadata.

Let's repeat the code count examples of Perl, Python, SQLite, MySQL and
PostgreSQL tarballs shown in the
[Combine Reports](#combine_reports)
example above, this time
using the SQL output options and the
[SQLite](http://www.sqlite.org/)
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:

<pre>
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project mariadb mariadb-server-10.1.zip | sqlite3 code.db
</pre>

The `--sql-project mariadb` part is optional; there's no need
to specify a project name when working with just one code base.  However,
since we'll be adding code counts from four other tarballs, we'll only
be able to identify data by input source if we supply a
project name for each run.

Now that we have a database we will need to pass in the `--sql-append`
switch to tell cloc not to wipe out this database but instead add more data:

<pre>
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project postgresql --sql-append postgresql-9.4.4.tar.bz2        | sqlite3 code.db
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project sqlite     --sql-append sqlite-amalgamation-3081101.zip | sqlite3 code.db
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project python     --sql-append Python-2.7.10.tar.xz            | sqlite3 code.db
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project perl       --sql-append perl-5.22.0.tar.gz              | sqlite3 code.db
</pre>

Now the fun begins--we have a database, `code.db`, with lots of
information about the five projects and can query it
for all manner of interesting facts.

**Which is the longest file over all projects?**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,nBlank+nComment+nCode as nL from t
                                 where nL = (select max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) from t)'

sqlite|sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c|161623
</pre>

`sqlite3`'s default output format leaves a bit to be desired.
We can add an option to the program's rc file,
`~/.sqliterc`, to show column headers:
<pre>
  .header on
</pre>
One might be tempted to also include
<pre>
  .mode column
</pre>
in `~/.sqliterc` but this causes problems when the output has more than
one row since the widths of entries in the first row govern the maximum
width for all subsequent rows. Often this leads to truncated output--not
at all desirable. One option is to write a custom SQLite output
formatter such as `sqlite_formatter`, included with cloc.

To use it, simply pass `sqlite3`'s STDOUT into `sqlite_formatter`
via a pipe:

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,nBlank+nComment+nCode as nL from t
                         where nL = (select max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) from t)' | ./sqlite_formatter
  <font color="darkgreen">
  -- Loading resources from ~/.sqliterc
  Project File                                  nL
  _______ _____________________________________ ______
  sqlite  sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c 161623
  </font>
</pre>

If the "Project File" line doesn't appear, add `.header on` to your
`~/.sqliterc` file as explained above.


**What is the longest file over all projects?**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,nBlank+nComment+nCode as nL from t
                         where nL = (select max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) from t)' | sqlite_formatter

Project File                                  nL
_______ _____________________________________ ______
sqlite  sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c 161623
</pre>

**What is the longest file in each project?**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,max(nBlank+nComment+nCode) as nL from t
                          group by project order by nL;' | sqlite_formatter

Project    File                                                             nL
__________ ________________________________________________________________ ______
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c                          28091
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/preproc.c            54623
mariadb    server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/nfkc.c             80246
perl       perl-5.22.0/cpan/Locale-Codes/lib/Locale/Codes/Language_Codes.pm 100747
sqlite     sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c                            161623
</pre>

**Which files in each project have the most code lines?**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project,file,max(nCode) as nL from t
                         group by project order by nL desc;' | sqlite_formatter

Project    File                                                             nL
__________ ________________________________________________________________ ______
perl       perl-5.22.0/cpan/Locale-Codes/lib/Locale/Codes/Language_Codes.pm 100735
sqlite     sqlite-amalgamation-3081101/sqlite3.c                             97469
mariadb    server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/nfkc.c             80221
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/interfaces/ecpg/preproc/preproc.c            45297
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c                          26705
</pre>

**Which C source files with more than 300 lines have a comment ratio below 1%?**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project, file, nCode, nComment,
                         (100.0*nComment)/(nComment+nCode) as comment_ratio from t
                         where language="C" and nCode > 300 and
                         comment_ratio < 1 order by comment_ratio;' | sqlite_formatter

Project    File                                                                                            nCode nComment comment_ratio
__________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________ _____ ________ __________________
mariadb    server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/lib/nfkc.c                                           80221       14 0.0174487443135789
python     Python-2.7.10/Python/graminit.c                                                                  2175        1 0.0459558823529412
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_turkish.c                            2095        1 0.0477099236641221
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_french.c                             1211        1 0.0825082508250825
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_french.c                        1201        1 0.0831946755407654
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_hungarian.c                          1182        1 0.084530853761623
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_hungarian.c                     1178        1 0.0848176420695505
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-eucjpms.c                                                             67466       60 0.0888546633889169
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_english.c                            1072        1 0.0931966449207828
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_english.c                       1064        1 0.0938967136150235
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_spanish.c                            1053        1 0.094876660341556
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_spanish.c                       1049        1 0.0952380952380952
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_italian.c                            1031        1 0.0968992248062016
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_italian.c                       1023        1 0.09765625
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_portuguese.c                          981        1 0.10183299389002
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_portuguese.c                     975        1 0.102459016393443
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_romanian.c                            967        1 0.103305785123967
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_2_romanian.c                       961        1 0.103950103950104
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-ujis.c                                                                67177       79 0.117461639110265
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_finnish.c                             720        1 0.13869625520111
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_porter.c                              717        1 0.139275766016713
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_finnish.c                        714        1 0.13986013986014
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_porter.c                         711        1 0.140449438202247
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_KOI8_R_russian.c                            660        1 0.151285930408472
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_russian.c                             654        1 0.152671755725191
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qt/_Qtmodule.c                                                        26705       42 0.157026956294164
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/icn/_Icnmodule.c                                                       1521        3 0.196850393700787
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-extra.c                                                                8282       18 0.216867469879518
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/bin/psql/sql_help.c                                                         3576        8 0.223214285714286
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-sjis.c                                                                34006       86 0.252258594391646
python     Python-2.7.10/Python/Python-ast.c                                                                6554       17 0.258712524729874
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-cp932.c                                                               34609       92 0.265122042592432
perl       perl-5.22.0/keywords.c                                                                           2815        8 0.283386468296139
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/menu/_Menumodule.c                                                     3263       10 0.305530094714329
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_dutch.c                               596        2 0.334448160535117
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_dutch.c                          586        2 0.340136054421769
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-gbk.c                                                                 10684       38 0.354411490393583
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/qd/_Qdmodule.c                                                         6694       24 0.357249181303959
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/win/_Winmodule.c                                                       3056       11 0.358656667753505
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_german.c                              476        2 0.418410041841004
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_german.c                         470        2 0.423728813559322
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-euc_kr.c                                                               9956       44 0.44
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/utils/fmgrtab.c                                                     4815       23 0.475403059115337
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/ctl/_Ctlmodule.c                                                       5442       28 0.511882998171846
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/ae/_AEmodule.c                                                         1347        7 0.51698670605613
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/app/_Appmodule.c                                                       1712        9 0.52295177222545
mariadb    server-10.1/strings/ctype-gb2312.c                                                               6377       35 0.54585152838428
mariadb    server-10.1/storage/tokudb/ft-index/third_party/xz-4.999.9beta/src/liblzma/lzma/fastpos_table.c   516        3 0.578034682080925
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/evt/_Evtmodule.c                                                        504        3 0.591715976331361
python     Python-2.7.10/Modules/expat/xmlrole.c                                                            1256        8 0.632911392405063
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_UTF_8_danish.c                              312        2 0.636942675159236
postgresql postgresql-9.4.4/src/backend/snowball/libstemmer/stem_ISO_8859_1_danish.c                         310        2 0.641025641025641
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/res/_Resmodule.c                                                       1621       12 0.734843845682792
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/drag/_Dragmodule.c                                                     1046        8 0.759013282732448
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/list/_Listmodule.c                                                     1021        8 0.777453838678329
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/te/_TEmodule.c                                                         1198       10 0.827814569536424
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/cg/_CGmodule.c                                                         1190       10 0.833333333333333
python     Python-2.7.10/Modules/clmodule.c                                                                 2379       23 0.957535387177352
python     Python-2.7.10/Mac/Modules/folder/_Foldermodule.c                                                  306        3 0.970873786407767
</pre>

**What are the ten longest files (based on code lines) that have no comments at all?  Exclude header, .html, and YAML files.**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project, file, nCode from t
                         where nComment = 0 and
                         language not in ("C/C++ Header", "YAML", "HTML")
                         order by nCode desc limit 10;' | sqlite_formatter

Project File                                                                 nCode
_______ ____________________________________________________________________ _____
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/ja.pl                 1938
python  Python-2.7.10/PCbuild/pythoncore.vcproj                               1889
python  Python-2.7.10/PC/VS8.0/pythoncore.vcproj                              1889
mariadb server-10.1/mysql-test/extra/binlog_tests/mysqlbinlog_row_engine.inc  1862
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/zh_strk.pl            1589
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/zh_zhu.pl             1563
mariadb server-10.1/storage/mroonga/vendor/groonga/configure.ac               1526
perl    perl-5.22.0/cpan/Unicode-Collate/Collate/Locale/zh_pin.pl             1505
mariadb server-10.1/mysql-test/suite/funcs_1/storedproc/storedproc_02.inc     1465
python  Python-2.7.10/PC/VS8.0/_bsddb.vcproj                                  1463
</pre>

**What are the most popular languages (in terms of lines
of code) in each project?**

<pre>
prompt> sqlite3 code.db 'select project, language, sum(nCode) as SumCode from t
                         group by project,language
                         order by project,SumCode desc;' | sqlite_formatter
Project    Language                  SumCode
__________ _________________________ _______
mariadb    C++                        983026
mariadb    C                          715018
mariadb    C/C++ Header               209394
mariadb    Bourne Shell                61943
mariadb    Perl                        35562
mariadb    Pascal                      32541
mariadb    HTML                        16489
mariadb    Javascript                  15540
mariadb    m4                          14215
mariadb    CMake                       12206
mariadb    XML                          5210
mariadb    Ruby                         4998
mariadb    Puppet                       3848
mariadb    make                         3631
mariadb    SQL                          3405
mariadb    Python                       2545
mariadb    Bourne Again Shell           1604
mariadb    Windows Module Definition    1211
mariadb    lex                           991
mariadb    yacc                          810
mariadb    DOS Batch                     700
mariadb    Prolog                        448
mariadb    RobotFramework                441
mariadb    CSS                           393
mariadb    JSON                          359
mariadb    dtrace                        306
mariadb    Windows Resource File         250
mariadb    Assembly                      237
mariadb    WiX source                    155
mariadb    Visual Basic                   88
mariadb    YAML                           65
mariadb    PHP                            24
mariadb    SKILL                          16
mariadb    sed                            16
mariadb    Windows Message File            6
mariadb    D                               4
mariadb    diff                            4
perl       Perl                       536445
perl       C                          155648
perl       C/C++ Header               147858
perl       Bourne Shell                42668
perl       Pascal                       8592
perl       XML                          2410
perl       YAML                         2078
perl       C++                          2033
perl       make                         1986
perl       Prolog                       1146
perl       JSON                         1037
perl       yacc                          998
perl       Windows Message File          489
perl       DOS Batch                     389
perl       Windows Resource File          85
perl       D                               8
perl       Lisp                            4
postgresql HTML                       785991
postgresql C                          736519
postgresql C/C++ Header                57014
postgresql SQL                         51926
postgresql yacc                        28491
postgresql Bourne Shell                17170
postgresql Perl                         9456
postgresql lex                          4285
postgresql make                         4114
postgresql m4                           1642
postgresql Windows Module Definition    1152
postgresql XSLT                          294
postgresql DOS Batch                      92
postgresql Assembly                       69
postgresql CSS                            69
postgresql D                              66
postgresql Windows Resource File          62
postgresql Lisp                           16
postgresql sed                            15
postgresql Python                         13
postgresql Bourne Again Shell             10
postgresql Windows Message File            5
python     Python                     434015
python     C                          375555
python     C/C++ Header                66942
python     Bourne Shell                45091
python     MSBuild script              38910
python     m4                          15559
python     Assembly                    12298
python     make                         2953
python     HTML                         2344
python     Windows Module Definition    2081
python     Objective-C                   635
python     Expect                        565
python     DOS Batch                     506
python     CSS                           328
python     Javascript                    229
python     Windows Resource File         207
python     C++                           128
python     vim script                    106
python     diff                          105
python     XML                            74
python     NAnt script                    30
python     Prolog                         24
python     Visual Basic                   12
sqlite     C                          101454
sqlite     C/C++ Header                 1546
</pre>

[](1}}})
<a name="custom_column_output"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Custom Column Output &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
Cloc's default output is a text table with five columns:
language, file count, number of blank lines, number of comment
lines and number of code lines.  The switches `--by-file`,
`--3`, and `--by-percent` generate additional information but
sometimes even those are insufficient.

The `--sql` option described in the previous section offers the
ability to create custom output.  This section has a pair of examples
that show how to create custom columns.
The first example includes an extra column, **Total**, which is the
sum of the numbers of blank, comment, and code lines.
The second shows how to include the language name when running
with `--by-file`.

**Example 1:  Add a "Totals" column.**

The first step is to run cloc and save the output to a relational database,
SQLite in this case:
<pre>
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project x yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3.tar.gz | sqlite3 counts.db
</pre>
(the tar file comes from the
[YAML-C++](https://github.com/jbeder/yaml-cpp) project).

Second, we craft an SQL query that returns the regular cloc output
plus an extra column for totals, then save the SQL statement to
a file, `query_with_totals.sql`:
<pre>
-- file query_with_totals.sql
select Language, count(File)   as files                       ,
                 sum(nBlank)   as blank                       ,
                 sum(nComment) as comment                     ,
                 sum(nCode)    as code                        ,
                 sum(nBlank)+sum(nComment)+sum(nCode) as Total
    from t group by Language order by code desc;
</pre>

Third, we run this query through SQLite using the `counts.db` database.
We'll include the `-header` switch so that SQLite prints the
column names:

<pre>
&gt; cat query_with_totals.sql | sqlite3 -header counts.db
Language|files|blank|comment|code|Total
C++|141|12786|17359|60378|90523
C/C++ Header|110|8566|17420|51502|77488
Bourne Shell|10|6351|6779|38264|51394
m4|11|2037|260|17980|20277
Python|30|1613|2486|4602|8701
MSBuild script|11|0|0|1711|1711
CMake|7|155|285|606|1046
make|5|127|173|464|764
Markdown|2|30|0|39|69
</pre>

The extra column for **Total** is there but the format is unappealing.
Running the output through `sqlite_formatter` yields the desired result:

<pre>
&gt; cat query_with_totals.sql | sqlite3 -header counts.db | sqlite_formatter
Language       files blank comment code  Total
______________ _____ _____ _______ _____ _____
C++              141 12786   17359 60378 90523
C/C++ Header     110  8566   17420 51502 77488
Bourne Shell      10  6351    6779 38264 51394
m4                11  2037     260 17980 20277
Python            30  1613    2486  4602  8701
MSBuild script    11     0       0  1711  1711
CMake              7   155     285   606  1046
make               5   127     173   464   764
Markdown           2    30       0    39    69
</pre>

The next section,
[Wrapping cloc in other scripts](#wrapping-cloc-in-other-scripts-),
shows one way these commands can be combined
into a new utility program.

**Example 2:  Include a column for "Language" when running with `--by-file`.**

Output from `--by-file` omits each file's language to save screen real estate;
file paths for large projects can be long and including an extra 20 or so
characters for a Language column can be excessive.

As an example, here are the first few lines of output using the same
code base as in Example 1:

<pre>
&gt; cloc --by-file yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3.tar.gz
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.81  T=1.14 s (287.9 files/s, 221854.9 lines/s)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
File                                                                                                     blank        comment           code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/configure                                                        2580           2264          13691
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/configure                                                  2541           2235          13446
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest.h                                    1972           4681          13408
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock/gmock.h                                          1585           3397           9216
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/integration/gen_emitter_test.cpp                                              999              0           8760
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/aclocal.m4                                                        987            100           8712
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/m4/libtool.m4                                               760             65           7176
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/build-aux/ltmain.sh                                         959           1533           7169
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock-gtest-all.cc                                     1514           3539           6390
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest-all.cc                               1312           2896           5384
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/test/gtest_unittest.cc                                     1226           1091           5098
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/include/gtest/internal/gtest-param-util-generated.h         349            235           4559
</pre>

The absence of language identification for each file
is a bit disappointing, but
this can be remedied with a custom column solution.

The first step, creating a database, matches that from Example 1 so
we'll go straight to the second step of creating the desired
SQL query.  We'll store this one in the file `by_file_with_language.sql`:

<pre>
-- file by_file_with_language.sql
select File, Language, nBlank   as blank  ,
                       nComment as comment,
                       nCode    as code
    from t order by code desc;
</pre>

Our desired extra column appears when we pass this custom SQL query
through our database:

<pre>
&gt; cat by_file_with_language.sql | sqlite3 -header counts.db | sqlite_formatter
File                                                                                               Language       blank comment code
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ ______________ _____ _______ _____
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/configure                                                 Bourne Shell    2580    2264 13691
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/configure                                           Bourne Shell    2541    2235 13446
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest.h                             C/C++ Header    1972    4681 13408
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock/gmock.h                                   C/C++ Header    1585    3397  9216
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/integration/gen_emitter_test.cpp                                      C++              999       0  8760
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/aclocal.m4                                                m4               987     100  8712
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/m4/libtool.m4                                       m4               760      65  7176
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/build-aux/ltmain.sh                                 Bourne Shell     959    1533  7169
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/fused-src/gmock-gtest-all.cc                              C++             1514    3539  6390
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/fused-src/gtest/gtest-all.cc                        C++             1312    2896  5384
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/test/gtest_unittest.cc                              C++             1226    1091  5098
yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3/test/gmock-1.7.0/gtest/include/gtest/internal/gtest-param-util-generated.h C/C++ Header     349     235  4559
</pre>

[](1}}})
<a name="wrapping_cloc_in_other_scripts"></a> []({{{1)
    *   [](#wrapping-cloc-in-other-scripts-)
##  [Wrapping cloc in other scripts &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

More complex code counting solutions are possible by wrapping
cloc in scripts or programs.  The "total lines" column from
example 1 of [Custom Column Output](#custom-column-output-)
could be simplified to a single command with this shell script (on Linux):

<pre>
#!/bin/sh
#
# These commands must be in the user's $PATH:
#   cloc
#   sqlite3
#   sqlite_formatter
#
if test $# -eq 0 ; then
    echo "Usage: $0  [cloc arguments]"
    echo "       Run cloc to count lines of code with an additional"
    echo "       output column for total lines (code+comment+blank)."
    exit
fi
DBFILE=`tempfile`
cloc --sql 1 --sql-project x $@ | sqlite3 ${DBFILE}
SQL="select Language, count(File)   as files                       ,
                      sum(nBlank)   as blank                       ,
                      sum(nComment) as comment                     ,
                      sum(nCode)    as code                        ,
                      sum(nBlank)+sum(nComment)+sum(nCode) as Total
         from t group by Language order by code desc;
"
echo ${SQL} | sqlite3 -header ${DBFILE} | sqlite_formatter
rm ${DBFILE}
</pre>

Saving the lines above to ``total_columns.sh`` and making it
executable (``chmod +x total_columns.sh``) would let us do
<pre>
./total_columns.sh yaml-cpp-yaml-cpp-0.5.3.tar.gz
</pre>
to directly get
<pre>
Language       files blank comment code  Total
______________ _____ _____ _______ _____ _____
C++              141 12786   17359 60378 90523
C/C++ Header     110  8566   17420 51502 77488
Bourne Shell      10  6351    6779 38264 51394
m4                11  2037     260 17980 20277
Python            30  1613    2486  4602  8701
MSBuild script    11     0       0  1711  1711
CMake              7   155     285   606  1046
make               5   127     173   464   764
Markdown           2    30       0    39    69
</pre>

Other examples:
* Count code from a specific branch of a web-hosted
git repository and send the results as a .csv email attachment:
https://github.com/dannyloweatx/checkmarx


[](1}}})
<a name="git_and_UTF8_pathnames"></a> []({{{1)
##  [git and UTF8 pathnames &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

cloc's ``--git`` option may fail if you work with directory or
file names with UTF-8 characters (for example, see
<a href=https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues/457>issue 457</a>).
The solution,
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22827239/how-to-make-git-properly-display-utf-8-encoded-pathnames-in-the-console-window,
is to apply this git configuration command:

<pre>
git config --global core.quotepath off
</pre>

Your console's font will need to be capable of displaying
Unicode characters.

[](1}}})
<a name="scale_factors"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Third Generation Language Scale Factors &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

cloc versions before 1.50 by default computed, for the provided inputs, a
rough estimate of how many lines of code would be needed to write the
same code in a hypothetical third-generation computer language.
To produce this output one must now use the `--3` switch.

Scale factors were derived from the 2006 version of language gearing ratios
listed at Mayes Consulting web site,
[http://softwareestimator.com/IndustryData2.htm](http://softwareestimator.com/IndustryData2.htm), using this equation:

cloc scale factor for language X = 3rd generation default gearing ratio / language X gearing ratio

For example, cloc 3rd generation scale factor for DOS Batch = 80 / 128 = 0.625.

The biggest flaw with this approach is that gearing ratios are defined
for logical lines of source code not physical lines (which cloc counts).
The values in cloc's 'scale' and '3rd gen. equiv.' columns should be
taken with a large grain of salt.

[](1}}})
<a name="options_txt"></a> []({{{1)
##  [options.txt configuration file &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

If you find yourself using the same command line switches every
time you invoke cloc, you can save some typing by adding those
switches to the ``options.txt`` runtime configuration file.
cloc will look for this file in the following default locations:
<pre>
# Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, macOS:
/home/USERNAME/.config/cloc/options.txt

# Windows
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\cloc
</pre>

If you run cloc with ``--help``, cloc will tell you
where it expects to find this config file file.  The information
appears by the explanation of the ``--config`` switch after
the text ``the default location of``.
On Unix-like operating systems, this can be simplified to

<pre>
&gt; cloc --help | grep "default location"
             the default location of /home/al/.config/cloc/options.txt.
</pre>

and in a Windows ``cmd`` terminal with

<pre>
&gt; cloc --help | findstr default | findstr location
             the default location of C:\Users\al\AppData\Roaming\cloc
</pre>

Place each switch and arguments, if any, on a line by itself.
Lines prefixed with ``#`` symbol are ignored as comments and
blank lines are skipped.  Leading hyphens on the switches are
optional.  Here's a sample file:
<pre>
# options.txt
--vcs git
v      # verbose level 1
exclude-ext svg,html
</pre>

The path to the ``options.txt`` file can also be specified
with the ``--config FILE`` switch.

Finally, if cloc finds an ``options.txt`` file in the same
directory as files given by any of these switches (in the
listed priority), it will use that configuration file
from that location:

1. ``--list-file``
1. ``--exclude-list-file``
1. ``--read-lang-def``
1. ``--force-lang-def``
1. ``--diff-list-file``

Run with ``--verbose`` to have cloc tell you which, if
any, ``options.txt`` file it uses.

[](1}}})
<a name="Python Programmatic Interface"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Python Programmatic Interface &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

[Stefano Campanella](https://github.com/StefanoStone)
created a Python programmatic interface to cloc.
It is available at https://github.com/pycloc/pycloc

[](1}}})
<a name="Java Programmatic Interface"></a> []({{{1)
##  [Java Programmatic Interface &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

[Ozren Dabić](https://github.com/seart-group/jcloc/commits?author=dabico)
created a Java programmatic interface to cloc.
It is available at https://github.com/seart-group/jcloc

[](1}}})
<a name="complex_regex_recursion"></a> []({{{1)
#  [Complex regular subexpression recursion limit &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
cloc relies on the Regexp::Common module's regular expressions to remove
comments from source code.  If comments are malformed, for example the
``/*`` start comment marker appears in a C program without a corresponding ``*/``
marker, the regular expression engine could enter a recursive
loop, eventually triggering the warning
``Complex regular subexpression recursion limit``.

The most common cause for this warning is the existence of comment markers
in string literals.  While language compilers and interpreters are smart
enough to recognize that ``"/*"`` (for example) is a string and not a comment,
cloc is fooled.  File path globs, as in this line of JavaScript
<pre>var paths = globArray("**/*.js", {cwd: srcPath});
</pre>
are frequent culprits.

In an attempt to overcome this problem, a different
algorithm which removes comment markers in strings can be enabled
with the ``--strip-str-comments`` switch.  Doing so, however,
has drawbacks:  cloc
will run more slowly and the output of ``--strip-comments``
will contain strings that no longer match the input source.

[](1}}})
<a name="Limitations"></a> []({{{1)
#   [Limitations &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
Identifying comments within source code is trickier than one might expect.
Many languages would need a complete parser to be counted correctly.
cloc does not attempt to parse any of
the languages it aims to count and therefore is an imperfect tool.
The following are known problems:

<ol>
<li>  Lines containing both source code and comments are counted as lines of code.
</li>
<li>  Comment markers within strings or
<a href="http://www.faqs.org/docs/abs/HTML/here-docs.html">here-documents</a>
are treated as actual comment markers and not string literals.
For example the following lines of C code
<pre>printf(" /* ");
for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
    a += i;
}
printf(" */ ");
</pre>
look to cloc like this:
<pre>printf(" xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx
xxxxxxx     ");
</pre>
where <tt>xxxxxxx</tt> represents cloc's view of commented text.
Therefore cloc counts the five lines as two lines of C code and three
lines of comments (lines with both code and comment are counted as code).

If you suspect your code has such strings, use the switch
``--strip-str-comments`` to switch to the algorithm which removes
embedded comment markers.  Its use will render the five lines above as
<pre>printf("  ");
for (i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
    a += i;
}
printf("  ");
</pre>
and therefore return a count of five lines of code.
See the
[previous section](#complex-regular-subexpression-recursion-limit-)
on drawbacks to using ``--strip-str-comments``.
</li>
<li> Embedded languages are not recognized.  For example, an HTML file containing
JavaScript will be counted entirely as HTML.
</li>
<li> Python docstrings can serve several purposes.  They may
contain documentation,
comment out blocks of code, or they can be regular strings (when
they appear on the right hand side of an assignment or as a function argument).
cloc is unable to infer the meaning of docstrings by context; by default
cloc treats all docstrings as comments.  The switch
<tt>--docstring-as-code</tt>
treats all docstrings as code.
</li>
<li> Language definition files read with <tt>--read-lang-def</tt> or
<tt>--force-lang-def</tt> must be plain ASCII text files.
</li>
<li> cloc treats compiler pragma's, for example <tt>#if</tt> / <tt>#endif</tt>, as code
even if these are used to block lines of source from being compiled;
the blocked lines still contribute to the code count.
</li>
<li> On Windows, cloc  will fail with <tt>Can't cd to ... No such file or
directory at <embedded>/File/Find.pm</tt> if the code being scanned has
file paths longer than 255 characters.  A work-around is to run cloc
from the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
</li>
<li> cloc's comment match code uses regular expressions
which cannot properly account for nested comments using
the same comment markers (such as <tt>/*  /*  */  */</tt>).
</li>
<li> XML comments embedded within <tt>CDATA</tt> blocks are counted as
comments rather than code.
</li>
</ol>

[](1}}})
<a name="AdditionalLanguages"></a> []({{{1)
#   [Requesting Support for Additional Languages &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

If cloc does not recognize a language you are interested in counting,
create a [GitHub issue](https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues)
requesting support for your language.  Include this information:
<ol>
<li> File extensions associated with the language.  If the language does
not rely on file extensions and instead works with fixed file names or
with `#!` style program invocations, explain what those are.</li>
<li> A description of how comments are defined.</li>
<li> Links to sample code.</li>
</ol>

[](1}}})
<a name="reporting_problems"></a> []({{{1)
#  [Reporting Problems &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

If you encounter a problem with cloc, first check to see if
you're running with the latest version of the tool:
<pre>
  cloc --version
</pre>
If the version is older than the most recent release
at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/releases, download the
latest version and see if it solves your problem.

If the problem happens with the latest release, submit
a new issue at https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/issues *only*
if you can supply enough information for anyone reading the
issue report to reproduce the problem.
That means providing
<ol>
<li> the operating system you're running on</li>
<li> the cloc command with all options</li>
<li> the code you are counting (URL to a public git repo or zip file or
tar file, et cetera)</li>
</ol>
The last item is generally problematic.  If the code base is
proprietary or amounts to more than a few dozen kilobytes,
you'll need to try to reconstruct similar inputs or demonstrate
the problem with an existing public code base.

Problem reports that cannot be reproduced will be ignored and
eventually closed.

[](1}}})
<a name="citation"></a> []({{{1)
#  [Citation &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")

Please use the following bibtex entry to cite cloc in a publication:

<pre>
@software{adanial_cloc,
  author       = {Albert Danial},
  title        = {cloc: v1.92},
  month        = dec,
  year         = 2021,
  publisher    = {Zenodo},
  version      = {v1.92},
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.5760077},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5760077}
}
</pre>

(Update the version number and corresponding year if this
entry is outdated.)

[](1}}})
<a name="Acknowledgments"></a> []({{{1)
#   [Acknowledgments &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
[Wolfram Rösler](https://github.com/wolframroesler) provided most of the code examples in the test suite.
These examples come from his [Hello World collection](http://helloworldcollection.de/).

Ismet Kursunoglu found errors with the MUMPS counter and provided
access to a computer with a large body of MUMPS code to test cloc.

Tod Huggins gave helpful suggestions for the Visual Basic filters.

Anton Demichev found a flaw with the JSP counter in cloc v0.76
and wrote the XML output generator for the `--xml` option.

Reuben Thomas pointed out that ISO C99 allows `//` as a comment
marker, provided code for the `--no3` and `--stdin-name`
options, counting the m4 language,
and suggested several user-interface enhancements.

Michael Bello provided code for the `--opt-match-f`,
`--opt-not-match-f`,
`--opt-match-d`, and `--opt-not-match-d`
options.

Mahboob Hussain inspired the `--original-dir` and
`--skip-uniqueness` options, found a
bug in the duplicate file detection logic and improved the JSP filter.

Randy Sharo found and fixed an uninitialized variable bug for shell
scripts having only one line.

Steven Baker found and fixed a problem with the YAML output generator.

Greg Toth provided code to improve blank line detection in COBOL.

Joel Oliveira provided code to let `--exclude-list-file` handle
directory name exclusion.

Blazej Kroll provided code to produce an XSLT file, `cloc-diff.xsl`,
when producing XML output for the `--diff` option.

Denis Silakov enhanced the code which generates `cloc.xsl` when
using `--by-file` and `--by-file-by-lang` options, and
provided an XSL file that works with `--diff` output.

Andy (awalshe@sf.net) provided code to fix several bugs:
correct output of `--counted`
so that only files that are used in the code count appear and
that results are shown by language rather than file name;
allow `--diff` output from multiple runs to be summed
together with `--sum-reports`.

Jari Aalto created the initial version of `cloc.1.pod` and
maintains the Debian package for cloc.

Mikkel Christiansen (mikkels@gmail.com) provided counter definitions
for Clojure and ClojureScript.

Vera Djuraskovic from [Webhostinggeeks.com](http://webhostinggeeks.com/)
provided the
[Serbo-Croatian](http://science.webhostinggeeks.com/cloc)
translation.

Gill Ajoft of [Ajoft Software](http://www.ajoft.com)
provided the
[Bulgarian](http://www.ajoft.com/wpaper/aj-cloc.html)
translation.

The
[Knowledge Team](http://newknowledgez.com/)
provided the
[Slovakian](http://newknowledgez.com/cloc.html) translation.

Erik Gooven Arellano Casillas provided an update to the MXML counter to
recognize ActionScript comments.

[Gianluca Casati](http://g14n.info) created the
[cloc CPAN package](https://metacpan.org/pod/App::cloc).

<!--- broken link
Mary Stefanova provided the
[Polish](http://www.trevister.com/blog/cloc.html)
translation. --->

Ryan Lindeman implemented the `--by-percent` feature.

Kent C. Dodds, [@kentcdodds](https://twitter.com/kentcdodd),
created and maintains the npm package of cloc.

[Viktoria Parnak](http://kudoybook.com)
provided the
[Ukrainian](http://blog.kudoybook.com/cloc/)
translation.

Natalie Harmann provided the
[Belarussian](http://www.besteonderdelen.nl/blog/?p=5426)
translation.

Nithyal at [Healthcare Administration Portal](http://healthcareadministrationdegree.co/)
provided the
[Tamil](http://healthcareadministrationdegree.co/socialwork/aldanial-cloc/)
translation.

Patricia Motosan
provided the
[Romanian](http://www.bildelestore.dk/blog/cloc-contele-de-linii-de-cod/)
translation.

<!--- broken link
The [Garcinia Cambogia Review Team](http://www.garciniacambogiareviews.ca/)
provided the
[Arabic translation](http://www.garciniacambogiareviews.ca/translations/aldanial-cloc/). --->

Gajk Melikyan provided the
provided the
[Armenian translation](http://students.studybay.com/?p=34)
for http://studybay.com.

<a href="http://www.forallworld.com/cloc-grof-sornyi-kodot/">Hungarian translation</a>
courtesy of <a href="http://www.forallworld.com/">Zsolt Boros</a>.

<a href=https://github.com/stsnel>Sietse Snel</a> implemented the parallel
processing capability available with the <tt>--processes=<i>N</i></tt>
switch.

The development of cloc was partially funded by the Northrop Grumman
Corporation.

[](1}}})
<a name="Copyright"></a> []({{{1)
#   [Copyright &#9650;](#___top "click to go to top of document")
Copyright (c) 2006-2026, [Al Danial](https://github.com/AlDanial)
[](1}}})
