Software Architect's Handbook

Lines of code (LOC)

One such software metric is lines of code (LOC), also known as source lines of code (SLOC). This measurement simply represents the size of a software system by determining the number of lines in its source code.

Typically, software systems with more lines of code are greater in complexity and more difficult to maintain than those with fewer lines of code. However, comparisons of LOC between different software systems are really only useful if they involve an order of magnitude difference in lines of code. For example, if one software system has 50,000 lines of code, and another has 48,000 lines of code, you won't be able to make a determination on which software is more maintainable. However, if you were to compare a software ...