Code Metrics

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Perl Metrics This program is intended to help perl programmers write better code by becoming more aware of their coding style. In particular, one would like to know the code-to-comment ratio, the average number of lines per subroutine, the longest subroutine, and things like that.

I am now a software tools engineer at Transmeta . When I was doing enginering management at Brightmail , we had a lot of Perl code in-house and I wanted to get a grip on its quality. I wrote this as a quick hack to improve said quality by measuring some of the more obvious features of the code. This is my first pass at measuring some of the things that make software readable and maintainable.

Sample Output

===> perl-metrics.pl <===

code_with_comment                 2
subroutine_lines                115
blank_lines                      52
subroutines                       6
comment_lines                    37
pure_code                       106
total_lines                     197
DANGER -->  82 non-subroutine lines
code-to-comment ratio           2.7
avg lines per subroutine       16.7
longest subroutine: count_things (53 lines)

Share and enjoy! 

ChangeLog

perl_metrics-0.03.tar.gz
perl_metrics-0.02.tar.gz
perl_metrics-0.01.tar.gz

M Squared Technologies - Resource Standard Software Source Code Metrics For C, C++ and Java

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Metrics collection tools for C and C++ Source CodeThis page offers access to a collection of static code analysis tools that compute various metrics defined on C and C++ source code. The metrics are primarily size and complexity of various types (lines of code, Halstead, McCabe, etc.).

You will need a C or C++ compiler to build most of these tools. For tools that use shell or perl scripts, you will need the appropriate interpreter to run them; these interpreters are on all unix systems.

The source files for each tool are available here. The files have been packed into Unix-style tar files, which in turn have been compressed with the GNU utility gzip.

PC users must have long file names (i.e., a win32 system) to unpack them. Note that the GNU utilities are available for the PC, and include both gunzip (uncompressing utility) and tar (unpacking utility).

The tools, in alphabetical order, are the following:

• clc (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Counts total lines, noncomment lines, and statements in C/C++ source. Written by Brad Appleton in 1995. Implemented in perl.
• sloccount (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Tools for counting lines in many (many) languages. Written by David Wheeler in 2000. Implemented in shell, perl, and C.
• c_lines (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Count lines, not counting comments, blank lines or form feeds. Does a separate count of preprocessor directives. Written by Dan Kozak around 1994. Implemented in awk.
• cccc (gzip'ed tarfile)
  A metric analyser that provides a range of potentially interesting measures for C, C++, Java, Ada-83, and Ada-95 code. Written by Tim Littlefair of Edith Cowan University, Australia. Implemented in C using PCCTS, a freely available set of compiler-construction tools.
• c_count (gzip'ed tarfile)
  C_COUNT counts C-language source statements, and summarizes statistics about the relative amount of commentary, whitespace, etc. Written by Thomas E. Dickey in 1991, last updated 1998. Implemented in C.
• ccount (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Counts bytes, lines, language keywords, comment bytes, semicolons, block length, nesting depth, and many more; about 77 metrics total. Written by Joerg Lawrenz in 1993. Implemented in C using yacc and lex.
• csize (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Counts total lines, blank lines, lines with comments, nonblank noncomment lines, semicolons, and preprocessor directives in C programs. Written by Christopher Lott in 1994. Implemented in C using lex.
• cyclo 2.0 (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Analyzes cyclomatic complexity of a piece of ANSI C or C++ code. Can generate a postscript flowgraph of the functions. Written by Roger Binns in 1993. Implemented in C++.
• hp_mas (gzip'ed tarfile)
  Mas is a maintainability assessment tool for analyzing C programs that was developed under the sponsorship of Hewlett-Packard Corporate Engineering at the University of Idaho in 1992. Implemented in C.
• lc (gzip'ed tarfile)
  A tool to count lines of code in C files. Written by Brian Marick in 1983 and updated 1992. Implemented in C.
• metre 2.3 (gzip'ed tarfile)
  A rule-based software metrics tool for standard C. Written by Paul Long in 1994. Implemented in C.
• metrics (gzip'ed tarfile)
  A collection of tools (control/halstead/kdsi/mccabe). Collected and written by Brian Renaud around 1989. Implemented in C.
• spr (gzip'ed tarfile)
  A tool to measure NCSS for C source programs. Written by Ted Shapin in 1989. Implemented in C.

About building and using the tools:

I sucessfully built all of them using gcc/g++ on a sun running SunOS 4.1.3. The authors of packages `c_count', `csize', `metre', and sloccount went to considerable trouble to write portable code and flexible Makefiles.

The `hp_mas' package also includes well-documented Makefiles.

For `cyclo' and `metrics', no such effort was made, and consequently I had to monkey with some makefiles. Packages `ccount', `clc', `lc', and `spr' are relatively simple and should not present many problems.

I have not used all of the tools extensively, so unfortunately I can't make any helpful statements about reliability or ease of use.

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Last modified: March, 12, 2019