Line Counting Utility

lincnt is a source line counting utility for C-like files. It uses a simple parser to recognize C and C++ style comments to distinguish code and comment lines and count them separately.

What's Counted

linecnt counts separately comments, empty lines and brace lines, which are lines with single open and close brace characters. Everything else is considered code.

For example, this is how the following source file will be counted:

///                                         <-- C++ comment
/// @brief Go to a URL.                     <-- C++ comment
///                                         <-- C++ comment
void go(const std::string& url)             <-- code
{                                           <-- brace
    if(url.empty()) {                       <-- code
        fw("http://localhost/");            <-- code (ignores `//` within a string)
    }                                       <-- brace
    else {                                  <-- code
        fw(url); // go to the URL           <-- code + C++ comment
    }                                       <-- brace
    /* used to return an error              <-- C comment
    return result;                          <-- C comment
    */                                      <-- C comment
}                                           <-- brace
                                            <-- empty line

Single-quoted and double-quoted strings are recognized and comments within strings are ignored.

Note that JavaScript's template literals are ignored by the current parser and may be miscounted. For example, this line will be counted as code and a C++ comment:

let url = `http://localhost/${path}`;

Syntax

linecnt [-s] [-v] [-d dir-name] [-c] [-j] [ext [ext [ ...]]]

  -s    Process files in the current directory and all subdirectories
  -v    Produce verbose output
  -d    Start in the specified directory
  -c    Add common C/C++ extensions to the list
  -j    Add common Java extensions to the list
  -V    Print version information
  -W    Print warranty information
  -h    Print this help

Lines are counted in files identified by extensions. There is no default extension list and at least one extension must be specified either explicitly or via the shorthand -c and -j options.

Only current directory is scanned by default. Sub-directories may be scanned using the -s option. Alternative directory may be specified via -d and may be either a relative or an absolute directory.

Examples

Scan .c, .cpp and .h files in the current directory.

linecnt cpp c h

Scan .java and .inc files in the directory src, relative to the current directory, and all of its sub-directories.

linecnt -d src -s -j inc

Scan commont C++ extensions in the directory /prj/src and all of its sub-directories.

linecnt -d /prj/src -s -c