indent-complexity

A language-agnostic code complexity analyzer. Works on any language by measuring indentation depth.

Usage

npm install indent-complexity

import { analyzeComplexity, analyzeDiffComplexity } from 'indent-complexity';

// Pass any code snippet, function of complete file to get complexity assessment:
const codeComplexity = analyzeComplexity(codeSnippet);
console.log(codeComplexity.score);

// Also supports `git diff` output to evaluate complexity for added lines (by default):
const diffComplexity = analyzeDiffComplexity(gitDiff);
console.log(diffComplexity.score);

The Score

Unfortunately none of the researchers suggests a single-metric similar to how Cyclomatic and Cognitive complexity work. So I decided to suggest one:

Σ(depth²) / lineCount

I chose depth squared weighting because:

• Mirrors cognitive complexity principles (nested code is harder to understand)
• Normalized by line count for cross-file comparison
• Shallow-but-wide code scores low; deep code scores high

Default thresholds:

| Level | Score | | -------- | ------ | | low | < 4 | | medium | 4 - 10 | | high | ≥ 10 |

verbose: true returns all research-backed metrics for you to experiment and explore:

| Metric | Description | | ---------------- | -------------------------------------------- | | variance | Correlates with McCabe cyclomatic complexity | | max | Deepest nesting level | | mean | Average depth per line | | lineCount | Lines analyzed (excluding comments/blanks) | | depthHistogram | Distribution of depths |

License

MIT