I've seen metrics done on the basis of symbol counts, not characters or lines. In theory this normalize differences in coding styles, such as verbose identifie

I've seen metrics done on the basis of symbol counts, not characters or lines. In theory this normalize differences in coding styles, such as verbose identifiers, or positioning of braces, or liberal use of whitespace. I agree with you about Java. I have a line on my screen that has 6 identifiers and is 99 characters long and it's not even a constructor call. One of many problems is long identifiers with similar names.