.Dd December 14, 2018
.Dt ULOC 7
.Os "Causal Agency"
.
.Sh NAME
.Nm ULOC
.Nd unique lines of code
.
.Sh 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.
.
.Pp
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:
.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
sort -u *.h *.c | wc -l
.Ed
.
.Pp
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.
.
.Pp
It can also be amusing
to read all of your code sorted alphabetically.
.
.Sh AUTHORS
.An June McEnroe Aq Mt june@causal.agency
.
.Pp
This document is produced from
.Xr mdoc 7
source available from
.Lk https://code.causal.agency/june/text.causal.agency "Code Toilet"
.
.Sh CAVEATS
Estimates such as these
should not be used for decision making
as if they were data.