A definition of lines of code for Ada

Abstract

The application of the principles and methods of modern software engineering requires the measurement of the essential factors of the software development process. One basic factor is the program size. Up to now no satisfactory definition of program size has been agreed upon. A popular definition of program size is "lines of code " (LOC) but even for this specific measure the situation is the same and there are different definitions of LOC in use. That is, for the same program we may obtain different values for its size.In this paper we report about a new definition of lines of code for Ada. This definition was developed at Siemens as part of an in-house standard, in which LOC is defined for different languages. This standard defines the number of all source lines as the gross size of a program and the number of all those lines which are essential for the correct execution of the program as the net size of a program. Furthermore, the standard distinguishes five sorts of lines which are important for a more detailed analysis of a program: statement, declaration, directive, comment, and separator lines.