Linguist

Analyses the languages of all files in a given folder and collates the results.

Powered by github-linguist, although it doesn't need to be installed.

Install

Node.js must be installed to be able to use this. Linguist is available on npm as linguist-js.

Install locally using npm install linguist-js and import it into your code like so:

const linguist = require('linguist-js');

Or install globally using npm install -g linguist-js and run using the CLI command linguist.

linguist --help

Usage

Linguist contains one function which analyses a given folder.

As an example, take the following file structure:

/
| src
| | cli.js 1kB
| | index.ts 2kB
| readme.md 3kB
| no-lang 10B

Running Linguist on this folder will return the following JSON:

{
  "files": {
    "count": 4,
    "bytes": 6010,
    "results": {
      "/src/index.ts": "TypeScript",
      "/src/cli.js": "JavaScript",
      "/readme.md": "Markdown",
      "/no-lang": null,
    }
  },
  "languages": {
    "count": 3,
    "bytes": 6000,
    "results": {
      "JavaScript": { "type": "programming", "bytes": 1000, "color": "#f1e05a" },
      "TypeScript": { "type": "programming", "bytes": 2000, "color": "#2b7489" },
      "Markdown": { "type": "prose", "bytes": 3000, "color": "#083fa1" },
    },
  },
  "unknown": {
    "count": 1,
    "bytes": 10,
    "filenames": {
      "no-lang": 10,
    },
    "extensions": {},
  },
}

Notes

• File paths in the output use only forward slashes as delimiters, even on Windows.
• Do not rely on any language classification output from Linguist being unchanged between runs. Language data is fetched each run from the latest classifications of github-linguist. This data is subject to change at any time and may change the results of a run even when using the same version of Linguist.

API

Node

const linguist = require('linguist-js');
let folder = './src';
let options = { keepVendored: false, quick: false };
const { files, languages, unknown } = linguist(folder, options);

• linguist(entry?, opts?) (default export): Analyse the language of all files found in a folder.
  • entry (optional; string or string array): The folder(s) to analyse (defaults to ./). Analyse multiple folders using the syntax "{folder1,folder2,...}".
  • opts (optional; object): An object containing analyser options.
    • ignoredFiles (string array): A list of file path globs to explicitly ignore.
    • ignoredLanguages (string array): A list of languages to ignore.
    • categories (string array): A list of programming language categories that should be included in the results. Defaults to ['data', 'markup', 'programming', 'prose'].
    • childLanguages (boolean): Whether to display sub-languages instead of their parents when possible (defaults to false).
    • quick (boolean): Whether to skip complex language analysis such as the checking of heuristics and gitattributes statements (defaults to false). Alias for checkAttributes:false, checkIgnored:false, checkHeuristics:false, checkShebang:false.
    • keepVendored (boolean): Whether to keep vendored files (dependencies, etc) (defaults to false).
    • keepBinary (boolean): Whether binary files should be included in the output (defaults to false).
    • relativePaths (boolean): Change the absolute file paths in the output to be relative to the current working directory (defaults to false).
    • checkAttributes (boolean): Force the checking of .gitattributes files (defaults to true unless quick is set).
    • checkIgnored (boolean): Force the checking of .gitignore files (defaults to true unless quick is set).
    • checkHeuristics (boolean): Apply heuristics to ambiguous languages (defaults to true unless quick is set).
    • checkShebang (boolean): Check shebang (#!) lines for explicit language classification (defaults to true unless quick is set).

Command-line

linguist --analyze [<folder>] [<...options>]
linguist --help

• --analyze: Analyse the language of all files found in a folder.
  • <folders...>: The folders to analyse (defaults to ./).
  • --ignoredFiles <paths...>: A list of space-delimited file path globs to ignore.
  • --ignoredLanguages: A list of languages to ignore.
  • --categories <categories...>: A list of space-delimited categories that should be displayed in the output.
  • --childLanguages: Whether to display sub-languages instead of their parents, when possible.
  • --json: Display the outputted language data as JSON.
  • --tree <traversal>: A dot-delimited traversal to the nested object that should be logged to the console instead of the entire output. Requires --json to be specified.
  • --quick: Whether to skip the checking of .gitattributes and .gitignore files for manual language classifications. Alias for --checkAttributes=false --checkIgnored=false --checkHeuristics=false --checkShebang=false.
  • --keepVendored: Whether to include vendored files (auto-generated files, dependencies folder, etc).
  • --keepBinary: Whether binary files should be excluded from the output.
  • --relativePaths: Change the absolute file paths in the output to be relative to the current working directory.
  • --checkAttributes: Force the checking of .gitatributes files (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkIgnored: Force the checking of .gitignore files (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkHeuristics: Apply heuristics to ambiguous languages (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
  • --checkShebang: Check shebang (#!) lines for explicit classification (use alongside --quick to overwrite).
• --help: Display a help message.
• --version: Display the current version of linguist-js.