ULOC(7)                Miscellaneous Information Manual                ULOC(7)

NAME
     ULOC – unique lines of code

DESCRIPTION
     There are many tools available which measure SLOC: source lines of code.
     These tools are strangely complex for what they intend to do, which is to
     estimate the relative sizes of projects.  They perform some amount of
     parsing in order to discount comments in various languages, and for
     reasons unknown each format their ouput in some oddly encumbered way.

     I propose a much simpler method of estimating relative sizes of projects:
     unique lines of code.  ULOC can be calculated with standard tools as
     follows:

           sort -u *.h *.c | wc -l

     In my opinion, the number this produces should be a better estimate of
     the complexity of a project.  Compared to SLOC, not only are blank lines
     discounted, but so are close-brace lines and other repetitive code such
     as common includes.  On the other hand, ULOC counts comments, which
     require just as much maintenance as the code around them does, while
     avoiding inflating the result with license headers which appear in every
     file, for example.

     It can also be amusing to read all of your code sorted alphabetically.

AUTHORS
     june@causal.agency

     This document is produced from mdoc(7) source available from
     https://git.causal.agency/src/tree/www/text.causal.agency

CAVEATS
     Estimates such as these should not be used for decision making as if they
     were data.

Causal Agency                  December 14, 2018                 Causal Agency