Excel Source Lines of Code Counter

Almost no one in the world cares what a SLOC (Source Line of Code) is except people who try to "measure" software in order to guess how long it might take to create, how many people should be involved, and how much it will cost.  And those people happen to the the people who buy the software that the company I work for produces.  It is especially helpful in estimating LARGE software projects comprised of many parts and modules, based on code counts, "function points," or historical estimates and comparisons.  Although we distribute a tool for estimating a broad range of code according to a variety of metrics, we also had a small C-based console program for counting C and C++ source lines of code laying around that we give to customers who want it.  Unfortunately, it has no graphical user interface.  I thought it might be a fun exercise to hone my Excel VBA skills by turning it into an Excel macro application, which wasn't hard, except for the amount of time that it took.  First the code parser needed to be turned into a VBA module.  A dialog had to be created for reading folders and listing files.  Selecting directories had to be done using the Windows API Find Folders dialog, which requires replicating the Windows SHBrowseForFolder API functionality in VBA (the web site vbapi.com is especially helpful in this matter). And getting file names requires using the Windows Scripting Host File System Object.

The result is probably not all that useful software given other tools out there so much as it shows how MUCH can be done with Excel VBA if you set your mind to it.  Of course, if anyone wants this as an Excel Addin, I can configure it as one, but in this case, not for free.  But my guess is that most likely it will remain merely an example of my programming skills, here on the web site.

The Codecount application the following features:

1. Ability to browse to any directory using the Windows Find Folder dialog.

2. The ability to select any number of files in the directory, filtered by *.C, *.CPP or *.H type.  The "Include File Types" filters are applied only to the files selected in the dialog's file listing.  If no files are selected, all files in the directory are counted.

OR

3. The ability to drill down into a directory tree and count ALL *.C, *.CPP, or *.H files.  Since the results are listed in an Excel workbook, and you can extract subsets of files in Excel, it didn't seem worthwhile to me to create a complicated feature that allowed users to build a selective array of files across their computer before using the Count button.

4. The ability to display the results in the current sheet, overwriting any count that may have already been done, or the ability to place the listing and count in a new sheet of any name.

5. The ability of the user to browse among the count sheets that have been created by the application.

 

5. When you press the Count button, the application gives an immediate popup of the total SLOC count of the files you have selected.

6. Then it lists files in an Excel worksheet while remaining open to do further counts.

 

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