Line Counter

This Python script counts the number of lines in all files within a specified directory, excluding or including specified files and extensions.

Installation

To install the script, you can clone the repository and run the script directly:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/line-counter.git
cd line-counter
python main.py

Making the Script Executable

The script can always be run by calling python /path/to/main.py, but you can make it executable so that you can run it by typing line-counter or line-counter.bat into the terminal. Here's how you can do it:

Unix-like Systems (Linux, macOS)

1. Make the script executable. You can do this by changing the permissions of the script file. Open a terminal, navigate to the directory containing the script, and run the following command:

   chmod +x main.py

2. Rename the script to line-counter (without the .py extension). You can do this with the following command:

   mv main.py line-counter

3. Move the script to a directory that's on the system's PATH. The PATH is a list of directories that the system searches through when looking for executables. You can move the script to /usr/local/bin, which is a common place to put custom scripts:

   sudo mv line-counter /usr/local/bin

Now, you should be able to run the script from anywhere by typing line-counter into the terminal.

Windows

1. Add the directory containing the line-counter batch file to your system's PATH. Here's how you can do it:
   • Right-click on 'Computer' and click on 'Properties'.
   • Click on 'Advanced system settings'.
   • Click on 'Environment Variables'.
   • Under 'System Variables', find the 'Path' variable, select it, and click on 'Edit'.
   • In the 'Variable value' field, append the full path to the directory containing the batch file.

Now, you should be able to run the script from anywhere by typing line-counter.bat into the command prompt, followed by any arguments the script accepts.

To make the script executable as line-counter instead of line-counter.bat, you can create an alias in Windows:

1. Open a command prompt.

2. Run the following command:

   doskey line-counter=line-counter.bat $*

Note: This alias will only be available in the current session. To make it permanent, you can add it to your user's profile script. For example, you can add the doskey command to your user's profile script, which is located at C: \Users\YourUsername\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1 for PowerShell or C: \Users\YourUsername\Documents\profile.ps1 for Command Prompt.

Usage

The script is intended to be run from the command line. It takes a directory to search, and optional arguments for files or directories to include or exclude, and file extensions to include or exclude.

Here are the available command line arguments:

• directory: The directory to search. This is a required argument.
• -i or --include: Files or directories to include. This is an optional argument.
• -ix or --include-extensions: File extensions to include. This is an optional argument.
• -e or --exclude: Files or directories to exclude. This is an optional argument.
• -ex or --exclude-extensions: File extensions to exclude. This is an optional argument.

Note: Only one of include or exclude, and only one of include-extensions or exclude-extensions can be provided.

Files with no extensions are given the .noext extension by the script. This allows you to include or exclude such files using the --include-extensions or --exclude-extensions arguments respectively.

Examples

Here are some examples of how to use the script:

1. Count the lines in all files in a directory:

   python main.py /path/to/directory

   line-counter /path/to/directory

2. Count the lines in all files in a directory, excluding any files in the venv directory and any files with a .txt extension:

   python main.py /path/to/directory --exclude venv --exclude-extensions .txt 

   line-counter /path/to/directory -e venv -ex .txt

3. Count the lines in all Python files in a directory, including only files in the src directory:

   python main.py /path/to/directory --include src --include-extensions .py 

   line-counter /path/to/directory -i src -ix .py

The script will then print the line counts for each file extension, sorted by the number of lines, and the total line count.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more information.