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<overview>

<p>This metric measures the number of lines of code in each file. The value excludes docstrings, comments and

blank lines.</p>

<p>Organizing source into very large files is not recommended because:</p>

<ul><li>it can be difficult to understand and maintain the code, even with good support from

development tools</li>

<li>it increases the risk that multiple developers will work on the same file at once, and increases the

incidence of merge conflicts</li>

<li>it may be a symptom of weak code organization, where many different features are handled by functions in

a single file.</li>

</ul>

</overview>

<recommendation>

<p>The solution depends on the underlying cause:</p>

<ul><li>if individual classes or functions are too large then they should be refactored into smaller

modules</li>

<li>if the class contains many classes or functions, they should be

moved to their own modules (sometimes in a subsidiary module, where appropriate)</li>

<li>if the file has been automatically generated by a tool, then it should be left alone.</li>

</ul>

</recommendation>

<references>

<li>M. Fowler, <em>Refactoring</em>. Addison-Wesley, 1999.</li>

<li>Wikipedia: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring">Code refactoring</a>.</li>

</references>

</qhelp>