rloc

A blazingly fast line-of-code counter written in Rust. Full-featured cloc replacement.

Quick Start

# Count lines in current directory
rloc

# Count lines in specific paths
rloc src/ lib/ tests/

# Output as JSON
rloc --json

# Show per-file breakdown
rloc --by-file

# Compare two directories
rloc old_version/ --diff new_version/

Example Output

Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/your-username/rloc
cd rloc
cargo build --release
# Binary is at ./target/release/rloc

Cargo

cargo install rloc

Why rloc?

• Fast: Parallel processing with rayon. Typically 100-125x faster than cloc.
• Accurate: Language-aware comment parsing handles nested comments, string literals, and edge cases.
• Full-featured: Diff mode, archive support, custom languages, duplicate detection - everything cloc has.
• Modern defaults: Respects .gitignore and excludes common non-source directories by default.
• Multiple output formats: Table, JSON, CSV, YAML, Markdown, SQL, and XML.
• Single binary: No runtime dependencies. Easy to install and distribute.

Performance

Benchmark on a large mixed-language monorepo (~40k files, ~6M lines of code):

rloc achieves this through parallel file processing and efficient I/O.

Output Formats

rloc --format table   # Default: Unicode table
rloc --format json    # JSON (compatible with cloc)
rloc --format csv     # CSV
rloc --format yaml    # YAML
rloc --format md      # Markdown table
rloc --format sql     # SQL CREATE/INSERT statements
rloc --format xml     # XML

Or use shorthand flags: --json, --csv, --yaml, --md, --sql, --xml

Filtering

By language

rloc --include-lang Rust,Python    # Only count these languages
rloc --exclude-lang JavaScript     # Exclude these languages

By extension

rloc --include-ext rs,py           # Only these extensions
rloc --exclude-ext min.js,bundle.js

By file content

rloc --include-content 'TODO|FIXME'   # Only files containing pattern
rloc --exclude-content 'generated'     # Exclude files containing pattern

By path pattern

rloc --match-f '\.test\.'          # Files matching regex
rloc --not-match-f '_test\.go$'    # Files not matching regex
rloc --match-d 'src|lib'           # Directories matching regex
rloc --not-match-d 'vendor|third_party'

By directory

rloc --exclude-dir vendor,generated
rloc --max-depth 3                 # Limit directory traversal depth
rloc --no-recurse                  # Only process top-level directory

By file size

rloc --max-file-size 10            # Skip files larger than 10 MB

Advanced Features

Diff Mode

Compare two sets of files to see what changed:

rloc old_version/ --diff new_version/

Output shows lines of code that are same, modified, added, or removed:

Language           Same   Modified      Added    Removed
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Rust               1500        200        150         50
JavaScript          800         50         25         10
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
SUM                2300        250        175         60

Archive Support

Process files inside archives without extracting manually:

rloc project.zip --extract-archives
rloc release.tar.gz --extract-archives

Supports: .zip, .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz

Custom Language Definitions

Define new languages or override built-in definitions with YAML:

# custom_langs.yaml
MyLang:
  extensions: [mylang, ml]
  line_comments: ["#", "//"]
  block_comment_start: "/*"
  block_comment_end: "*/"
  nested_comments: false

DSL:
  extensions: [dsl]
  line_comments: ["--"]

rloc --read-lang-def custom_langs.yaml

Force Language Detection

Treat files with specific extensions as a different language:

rloc --force-lang=Rust,txt    # Treat .txt files as Rust
rloc --force-lang=Python,inc  # Treat .inc files as Python

Duplicate Detection

By default, rloc detects and skips duplicate files (by content hash):

rloc                          # Skips duplicates (default)
rloc --skip-uniqueness        # Count duplicates multiple times

Strip Comments

Extract code or comments from source files:

rloc --strip-comments=stripped src/    # Output: *.stripped (code only)
rloc --strip-code=comments src/        # Output: *.comments (comments only)

Read File List

Process a predefined list of files:

rloc --list-file files.txt    # One file path per line

Combine Reports

Merge multiple JSON reports:

rloc project1/ --json > report1.json
rloc project2/ --json > report2.json
rloc --sum-reports report1.json --sum-reports report2.json

Aggregate Small Results

Group languages with few files into "Other":

rloc --summary-cutoff 5       # Languages with <5 files become "Other"

Percentage Output

Show percentages instead of absolute counts:

rloc --by-percent

Git Integration

rloc --vcs git                # Use git ls-files for file discovery
rloc --include-submodules     # Include files in git submodules

Options Reference

Supported Languages

rloc recognizes 100+ programming languages including:

Ada, Aria, Assembly, AXAML, Bash, Bicep, BitBake, C, C#, C++, Clarity, Clojure, COBOL, CoffeeScript, Crystal, CSS, D, Dart, Elixir, Elm, Erlang, F#, Forth, Fortran, Go, GraphQL, Groovy, Haskell, HCL, HTML, Java, JavaScript, JSON, Julia, Kotlin, Less, Lisp, Lua, Magik, Makefile, Markdown, MATLAB, Nim, Nix, Objective-C, OCaml, Odin, Pascal, Perl, PHP, PowerShell, Prolog, Protocol Buffers, Python, R, Rego, Ruby, Rust, Sass, Scala, Scheme, Shell, SQL, Swift, Tcl, Terraform, TOML, TypeScript, USS, UXML, V, Verilog, VHDL, Vim Script, VSCode Workspace, Vue, XML, YAML, Yarn, Zig, and many more.

Run rloc --show-lang for the complete list with comment syntax.

Default Exclusions

By default, rloc excludes common non-source directories:

.git, .hg, .svn, node_modules, target, vendor, dist, build, __pycache__, .venv, venv, .tox, .env

Use --no-ignore to disable these exclusions.

Feature Comparison with cloc

How It Works

1. Walk: Traverse directories using the ignore crate, respecting .gitignore patterns.
2. Detect: Identify language by file extension or special filenames (e.g., Makefile, Dockerfile).
3. Parse: Process each file with a state machine that tracks:
   • Whether we're inside a string literal
   • Whether we're inside a block comment (including nesting for languages that support it)
   • Line comment prefixes
4. Classify: Each line is classified as blank, comment, or code.
5. Aggregate: Results are collected in parallel and merged by language.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.

Acknowledgments

• cloc by Al Danial - the original inspiration
• tokei - another excellent Rust code counter
• ripgrep - for the ignore crate