cloc

Count blank lines, comment lines, and code lines across 400+ programming languages.

Author: Albert Danial
Alternative to: wc (See 3 others)
Language: Perl
This page last updated:

cloc (Count Lines of Code) analyzes source code and reports blank lines, comment lines, and code lines broken down by language. It runs on files, directories, archives (tar, zip, etc.), and git commits, with no dependencies beyond the Perl standard library.

Features

  • Recognizes 400+ languages automatically
  • Compares two codebases with --diff to show added, removed, and modified lines
  • Accepts directories, single files, zip/tar archives, and git refs as input
  • Multiple output formats: plain text, CSV, JSON, XML, SQL, YAML, Markdown
  • Can strip comments and blank lines from source files
  • User-definable custom language definitions
  • Ships as a single self-contained Perl script with no external dependencies

Basic usage

# Count lines in current directory.
cloc .

# Count lines in a git commit.
cloc HEAD

# Diff two directories.
cloc --diff old/ new/

# Output as JSON.
cloc --json .

Availability

Available on Linux, macOS, Windows, and BSD.