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Asked: 2026-05-29T04:19:27+00:00

I know that Lines of Code (LoC) is a dubious if not false code

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I know that Lines of Code (LoC) is a dubious if not false code metric and there are lots of posts to this effect.

However … I still have to provide a LoC count for a web site in a report.

I was using the Visual Studio 2010 Code Analysis Code Metrics feature to get the LoC when I wondered what does it do with or how does it count HTML, CSS and Javascript?

The VS Help text provides this description of the metric –

Lines of Code – Indicates the approximate number of lines in the code. The count is based on the IL code and is therefore not the exact number of lines in the source code file. A very high count might indicate that a type or method is trying to do too much work and should be split up. It might also indicate that the type or method might be hard to maintain.

So my multi part question is … does HTML, CSS, Javascript get compiled to IL and if it does then should I assume it is included in the VS LoC metric? If it does not get compiled to IL, what is the best way to calculate or include HTML, CSS and Javascript in the LoC metric for my report? Or should they even be included in LoC at all?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Does HTML, CSS, Javascript get compiled to IL?

    No – those files are static. The only time they get compiled is if you compose them in code behind and add them to the Response buffer directly.

    If it does not get compiled to IL, what is the best way to calculate or include HTML, CSS and Javascript in the LoC metric for my report? Or should they even be included in LoC at all?

    I would say counting those files may not be of much use — although getting a handle on JavaScript file size could be of importance as it would have some effect on page load times (larger files will take longer to download — but unless you have 20K lines of JavaScript, it shouldn’t be a huge difference).

    There are a few tools out there that count lines of code for all file types. Microsoft’s LOC counter is here. Also, tools like NDepend (which has a free trial) can count lines of code, too.

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