Multi-platform tool to count the number of keystrokes needed to write a file or multiple files in a folder.

This CLI tools can be of value in situations such as:

• Comparing keyboard layouts against each other
• Count symbols and keystrokes in code golf games
• Comparing programming languages syntax

To type the letter a one keystroke is required. Two keystrokes (SHIFT+A) are needed to type the capital version A. The goal of this application is to count exactly how many times one pushes a keyboard button for given files. This allows comparison of different keyboard layouts.

Symbols that are not included in the file are counted as Unicode characters. E.g. the letter ä can be written as Ctrl+Shift+u, e, 4, Space requiring 6 keystrokes.

A German poem result in the following output:

$ ke Mondnacht.txt 

Scanned 1 files of 341 bytes in 0.044s
Found 41 unique in 323 symbols on 14 lines

Layout  Keystrokes      Redundancy[%]
DE_DE   368             13.932
FR_FR   368             13.932
DE_CH   383             18.576
FR_CH   392             21.362
EN_US   427             32.198

Layout DE_DE requires 59 keystrokes (16.033%) less than layout EN_US

• The text contains 323 symbols or characters. Of these 41 symbols are unique, meaning for example the letter a is used 13 times.

• The input text is a German poem requiring 368 Keystrokes on a German Layout and 383 Keystrokes on a German based Swiss German DE_CH Layout.

• On an english based Layout 427 Keystrokes are needed to get all the German letters like ä. These letters are assumed to be types as Unicode combinations.

• The Redundancy, measured in percent, describes the deviation of a theoretical perfect keyboard layout requiring only 323 keystrokes for a text of 323 symbols.

• Comparing the first and last layouts the German based layout is more efficient and requires 59 keystrokes or 16% less than the English based layout.

More examples in examples:

• Compare programming language syntax

Clone to local disk, build with gradle and run the command line tool with the project as input. This tool runs on any ON that runs Java 19 or newer.

git clone https://github.com/ryru/keystroke_enumerator.git
cd keystroke_enumerator/
./gradlew clean installDist
./app/build/install/ke/bin/ke .

Currently, the following keyboard layouts are supported:

de-CH, de-DE, en-US, fr-CH, fr-FR

The keyboard layouts are defined in CSV files. Feel free to add additional keyboard layouts in PR.

Also known as file extensions. Currently, the following file types are supported:

c, cpp, css, hs, html, java, js, json, kt, md, pl, py, rs, sh, ts, txt, xml

And some other less know ones. The full list is defined in FileExtension.kt. Feel free to add additional keyboard layouts in PR.

Pull requests are welcome! Check CONTRIBUTING.md before starting any work.