cloc

Count Lines of Code

---

cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages.

Latest release: v2.08 (Jan. 24, 2026)

cloc moved to GitHub in September 2015 after being hosted at http://cloc.sourceforge.net/ since August 2006.

Quick Start

Step 1: Install cloc (see Install from Github Releases and Install via package manager) or run cloc's docker image. The Windows executable has no requirements. The source version of cloc requires a Perl interpreter, and the Docker version of cloc requires a Docker installation.

Step 2: Open a terminal (cmd.exe on Windows).

Step 3: Invoke cloc to count your source files, directories, archives, or git commits. The executable name differs depending on whether you use the development source version (cloc), source for a released version (cloc-2.08.pl) or a Windows executable (cloc-2.08.exe).

On this page, cloc is the generic term used to refer to any of these.

Include Security has a YouTube video showing the steps in action.

a file

prompt> cloc hello.c
       1 text file.
       1 unique file.
       0 files ignored.

https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=0.04 s (28.3 files/s, 340.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                                1              0              7              5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

a directory

prompt> cloc gcc-5.2.0/gcc/c
      16 text files.
      15 unique files.
       3 files ignored.

https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=0.23 s (57.1 files/s, 188914.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                               10           4680           6621          30812
C/C++ Header                     3             99            286            496
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            13           4779           6907          31308
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

an archive

We'll pull cloc's source zip file from GitHub, then count the contents:

prompt> wget https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc/archive/master.zip

prompt> cloc master.zip
https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.65  T=0.07 s (26.8 files/s, 141370.3 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perl                             2            725           1103           8713
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                             2            725           1103           8713
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

a git repository, using a specific commit

This example uses code from <a href=https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pudb>PuDB</a>, a fantastic Python debugger.

prompt> git clone https://github.com/inducer/pudb.git

prompt> cd pudb

prompt> cloc 6be804e07a5db
      48 text files.
      41 unique files.                              
       8 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.99  T=0.04 s (1054.9 files/s, 189646.8 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          28           1519            728           4659
reStructuredText                 6            102             20            203
YAML                             2              9              2             75
Bourne Shell                     3              6              0             17
Text                             1              0              0             11
make                             1              4              6             10
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            41           1640            756           4975
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

each subdirectory of a particular directory

Say you have a directory with three different git-managed projects, Project0, Project1, and Project2. You can use your shell's looping capability to count the code in each. This example uses bash (scroll down for cmd.exe example):

prompt> for d in ./*/ ; do (cd "$d" && echo "$d" && cloc --vcs git); done
./Project0/
7 text files.
       7 unique files.
       1 file ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.71  T=0.02 s (390.2 files/s, 25687.6 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
D                                4             61             32            251
Markdown                         1              9              0             38
make                             1              0              0              4
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                             6             70             32            293
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
./Project1/
       7 text files.
       7 unique files.
       0 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.71  T=0.02 s (293.0 files/s, 52107.1 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go                               7            165            282            798
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                             7            165            282            798
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
./Project2/
      49 text files.
      47 unique files.
      13 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.71  T=0.10 s (399.5 files/s, 70409.4 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          33           1226           1026           3017
C                                4            327            337            888
Markdown                         1             11              0             28
YAML                             1              0              2             12
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            39           1564           1365           3945
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

each subdirectory of a particular directory (Windows/cmd.exe)

for /D %I in (.\*) do cd %I && cloc --vcs git && cd ..

Overview

cloc counts blank lines, comment lines, and physical lines of source code in many programming languages. Given two versions of a code base, cloc can compute differences in blank, comment, and source lines. It is written entirely in Perl with no dependencies outside the standard distribution of Perl v5.6 and higher (code from some external modules is embedded within cloc) and so is quite portable. cloc is known to run on many flavors of Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, macOS, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, IRIX, z/OS, and Windows. (To run the Perl source version of cloc on Windows one needs ActiveState Perl 5.6.1 or higher, Strawberry Perl, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Cygwin, MobaXTerm with the Perl plug-in installed, or a mingw environment and terminal such as provided by Git for Windows. Alternatively one can use the Windows binary of cloc generated with PAR::Packer to run on Windows computers that have neither Perl nor Cygwin.)

In addition to counting code in individual text files, directories, and git repositories, cloc can also count code in archive files such as .tar (including compressed versions), .zip, Python wheel .whl, Jupyter notebook .ipynb, source RPMs .rpm or .src (