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The blazing-fast code counter — 70+ languages, Markdown fence breakdowns, JSON output, and warm runs under 0.1s. A tokei clone written in ZZ.

"Blink and it's counted."

---

$ zcc
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Language           Files     Lines      Code  Comments    Blanks
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Rust                 242    115221     95434     12724      7063
ZZ                   235      7816      5818      1102       896
Markdown              17      4176      1133      2146       897
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Total                538    143995    115691     18385      9923
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

 Markdown (embedded code)
 BASH                 27       186       159         0        27
 Rust                  9       209       153        30        26
 └ (Total)            44       479       382        34        63

Highlights

• Fast — ~70ms warm on a 500-file tree (beats tokei); ~300ms cold recount
• Smart Markdown — fenced code blocks attributed to their language
• Custom languages — add your own via config, with comment rules
• Themable — named, hex, or RGB colors globally and per language
• Honest JSON — machine-readable output for scripts and CI
• Generated-aware — bundles, lockfiles and codegen don't pollute totals
• Cached — mtime-keyed counts, instant repeat runs

Install

Arch Linux (AUR):

yay -S zcc

Prebuilt binary (Linux x86_64) — from the releases page:

tar -xzf zcc-0.1.0-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
sudo install -Dm755 zcc /usr/bin/zcc

From source (needs the ZZ toolchain):

git clone https://github.com/zaidejjo/zcc.git && cd zcc
cargo install --path ~/zz/crates/zz_cli   # the ZZ compiler
zz build -p src/main.zz
sudo cp src/bin/main /usr/bin/zcc

Usage

zcc [path] [flags]
zcc init [--force]

Flag	Effect
--output json	machine-readable JSON on stdout
--only LANG	count one language (--only Rust)
--by-file	list top files by lines after the table
--top N	files shown with --by-file (default 20)
--hidden	include hidden files/dirs
--no-ignore	skip .gitignore rules (still skips .git)
--no-cache	always recount, don't read/write the cache
--force	with init: overwrite existing config
--help, --version

zcc .                              # this tree
zcc src/ --only Rust               # one language
zcc . --output json > counts.json  # scripts love this
zcc --by-file --top 10             # where is all that code?
zcc init                           # scaffold ~/.config/zcc/config.json

NO_COLOR=1 disables all color.

Configuration

All customization lives in ~/.config/zcc/config.json (%APPDATA%\zcc\config.json on Windows). Scaffold it with zcc init, steal ideas from config.example.json, or theme it like config.example-zz.json. Missing file, bad JSON, or unknown keys all fall back to defaults — the config can never break a run.

{
  "display": {
    "color": true,
    "header": "cyan",
    "language": "green",
    "total": "cyan",
    "languages": {
      "ZZ": "#1e8ffb",
      "Rust": "#ff5500"
    }
  },
  "languages": {
    "MyLang": {
      "extensions": ["myl"],
      "files": ["Myfile"],
      "line": ["#"],
      "block_start": ["/*"],
      "block_end": ["*/"]
    }
  }
}

Colors (display)

Key	What it paints	Default
header	table header row	cyan
language	language names	green
total	total row	cyan
languages	per-language overrides	—
color	master switch (false = plain)	true

A hue is a color name (black red green yellow blue magenta cyan white and bright_*), hex ("#ff5500", "#f50"), or RGB ("255,165,0"). Unknown hues render plain, never an error.

Rules: per-language wins; Markdown/Text stay plain unless you override them explicitly; the Markdown section rows are dimmed and follow overrides, else the default language hue. Bold stays as-is.

Custom languages (languages)

Each entry replaces the whole builtin entry of the same name:

Field	Meaning
extensions	counted file extensions, no dot
files	counted exact filenames (Makefile, .bashrc)
line	line-comment markers
block_start / block_end	block-comment pair (single-element arrays)

Comment rules apply to new languages. Builtin languages keep their built-in rules (stable counts); use extensions/files to re-point an existing language at new files.

Precedence: builtin languages.json < ~/.config/zcc/languages.json < config.json → languages (later wins per language name).

Top files and generated code

--by-file appends a top-N section (and a files array to JSON). Files matching generated patterns (bundles, lockfiles, protobuf, codegen, generated/ trees) aggregate under a Generated row, never into language totals.

Count cache

Warm runs skip all file IO: ~/.cache/zcc/<slug(root)>.json stores per-file mtime + size + counts. Any edit, new, or deleted file recounts automatically (only that file). Filtered views (--only, --hidden, --no-ignore) read the cache but never write it, so a partial run can't poison full runs. --no-cache forces a full recount.

How files are chosen

walk → .gitignore/.ignore/.zccignore → default skips. Always skipped: .git/.hg/.svn, target, node_modules, vendor, bin, build, __pycache__, .idea/.vscode. Binary detection: strict UTF-8 read + NUL scan (single read per file).

Markdown fences

Fenced code blocks count toward the parent Markdown row (as comments, like tokei) and get their own aligned section after the table (see the demo above).

Performance

Run	zz_lang tree (538 files)
Warm cache	~70ms
Cold recount	~300ms
tokei (warm)	~88ms
scc (warm)	~59ms

Warm cache + pruning walk; startup floor is ~35ms. --no-cache numbers are the honest cold metric.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.