DEV Community

Cover image for How to count lines of code
websilvercraft
websilvercraft

Posted on • Edited on

How to count lines of code

#webdev #beginners #bash #javascript

This post if a followup for the previous one, on how to count lines in text or in a in a text file in Javascript. In this post I'm going to show how to count the lines of code in a project directory or any directory containing source code files of any type.

Using find, wc and xargs

In unix-linux based systems we can use find wc and xargs to count lines in files based on their extension.

find . -name '*.py' | xargs wc -l
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Excluding directories:

find . -name '*.py' -not -path './exclude-dir/*' | xargs wc -l
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Handling Spaces in Filenames

If the files or directories have spaces in their names, it’s safer to use find ... -print0 with xargs -0 to handle these names correctly.

find . -name '*.py' -print0 | xargs -0 wc -l
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode
  • find . -name '*.py' -print0: This finds all files ending with .py starting from the current directory (.). It prints the list of found files with each filename followed by a null character (\0) instead of a newline. This null character handling allows for filenames with special characters (including spaces) to be processed correctly by xargs.
  • xargs -0 wc -l: The -0 option tells xargs to expect null-terminated strings as input (matching the output of find ... -print0). xargs passes the filenames to wc -l, which counts the lines in each file. The output is a list of line counts followed by the corresponding filename.

Counting Lines for Multiple File Types

find . \( -name '*.py' -o -name '*.js' \) -print0 | xargs -0 wc -l
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Summing Total Lines

find . -name '*.py' | xargs wc -l | tail -n 1
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Using awk to "accumulate" line count

find . -name '*.py' -print0 | xargs -0 wc -l | awk '{total += $1} END {print total}'
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

awk '{total += $1} END {print total}': This awk script sums up the line counts. It reads the line counts (which are the first whitespace-delimited field $1 in the wc -l output) and accumulates them in the total variable. After processing all input lines, the END block prints the total sum of lines.

Using cloc(Count Lines of Code)

cloc (Count Lines of Code) is a specialized command line tool that not only counts lines of text, but also distinguishes between code, comments, and blank lines across multiple programming languages.

cloc .
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 
github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.82  T=2.12 s (1500.2 files/s, 240327.6 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JavaScript                    2257          39250          72045         199230
JSON                           229              9              0          39756
Markdown                       308          13894              2          39106
CSS                             21           2721            151          36892
Python                          49           4343           7763          21745
C/C++ Header                    10           1465            916           8019
Sass                            88           1339           1297           6797
TypeScript                     110            451           1794           2616
C++                              6            392             99           1840
Handlebars                      36            424             81           1184
HTML                             5              5              0            692
YAML                            33             37             34            567
SVG                              1              0            101            500
Lisp                             2             42             38            258
C#                               1             55              9            186
XML                              5              0              0             72
SQL                              2             11             16             66
make                             5             25              4             60
Bourne Shell                     3              4              6             26
Nix                              1              1              0             19
DOS Batch                        2              1              0              6
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                          3174          64469          84356         359637
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Advanced Options

Filter by Specific Languages:

cloc --include-lang=Python,JavaScript .
    3843 text files.
    3510 unique files.                                          
    1553 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.82  T=1.33 s (1734.4 files/s, 259007.6 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JavaScript                    2257          39250          72045         199230
Python                          49           4343           7763          21745
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                          2306          43593          79808         220975
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Exclude Directories:

cloc --exclude-dir=node_modules .
     131 text files.
     117 unique files.                                          
      49 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.82  T=0.14 s (673.5 files/s, 480769.4 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CSS                             18           2707            145          36722
JavaScript                      29           4703           1679          13994
JSON                             4              0              0           3862
Handlebars                      36            424             81           1184
SQL                              2             11             16             66
Markdown                         3             20              0             63
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            92           7865           1921          55891
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

If you liked this post, give a thumb up and check my other post on how to count the number lines in a text or text files in javascript, or use my online tool to count lines in a text.

πŸš€ Interested to learn more πŸ› οΈπŸ€–πŸ’»? Then don't forget to πŸ“¬βœ‰οΈ, πŸ‘‡

πŸš€ If you are interested in learning more about programming, πŸ› οΈ building applications, or in general about AI πŸ€– and tech πŸ’», you can subscribe to my newsletter at websilvercraft.substack.com βœ‰οΈ to get the posts delivered directly to you as soon as I publish them! πŸ“¬
β €β €β € β €β €β €β € β €β € β €πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†
β €β €β €β €β €β €β €β € πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†
β € β € πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†
πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†πŸ‘†

Top comments (0)

Read next

paulsanjay81 profile image

From Slow to Swift: A Developer's Guide to High-Performance Web Design

Sanjay Paul -

harold_defree profile image

Month 1: The Kickoff – Building the Foundation

Harold Defree -

cp_nandani profile image

Building a Better Monorepo with TypeScript, Turborepo, or Nx

Nandani Sharma -

witcher_1001 profile image

🌐 SSH Tunneling: Securely Connect to Remote Networks Like a Pro

The Witcher -