Often times, while writing software, it’s useful to know how many lines of code exist in a project. While this is a poor metric for gauging a developer’s output, it can be useful in getting a feel for the size of a project. It may also be useful in comparing different languages. For example, how much more concise is Kotlin than Java? Unfortunately, there are no built-in tools for doing this calculation. So, how can you easily count lines of code? I use a simple shell script – which will work on Linux or Mac, to count my code.
#!/bin/bash
extensions=(bas c cc cob cpp cs fth f90 go h html java js jsp m pas php pl py sc sh sql xhtml)
for extension in ${extensions[@]}
do
lines=`find . -name "*.$extension" -type f -exec cat {} \; | tr -d '[:blank:]' 2> /dev/null | grep -v '^$' | wc -l `
if [ $lines -ne 0 ]
then
echo $extension: $lines
fi
done
You can add additional language support by adding the file extension to the extensions list. Then, run this script from the root directory for the project to see the code count.