PLOC — Physical Lines of Code - mehen

PLOC (Physical Lines of Code) counts source lines that contain at least one code token. Pure comment lines and pure blank lines are excluded.

What mehen emits

Key	Type	Description
`loc.ploc`	int	Physical instruction lines.

How it is computed

A line counts toward PLOC when the parser reports at least one non-trivia token on it. Lines that hold only whitespace, only block-comment continuation, or only line-comment text are excluded. Mixed lines (code followed by an inline comment) count as PLOC.

When it is useful

“Real code” size: PLOC strips out comments and blanks, so it is closer to what reviewers think of as the size of a file.
Comparing comment density: pair with CLOC to compute the comment ratio cloc / (cloc + ploc).
Maintainability inputs: PLOC is one of the inputs to the Maintainability Index.

Equivalents in other tools

Tool	Equivalent
Sonar	`ncloc` (non-comment lines of code).
`cloc` (CLI)	“code” column.
Visual Studio MI calculation	”lines of code” input.

References

Park, R. E. (1992). Software Size Measurement: A Framework for Counting Source Statements. CMU/SEI-92-TR-20. SEI report.
Sonar: ncloc in metric definitions.

See also

LOC family — overview.
CLOC — comment lines.
LLOC — logical (statement) lines.