Mercurial > hg > octave-terminal
changeset 12976:2e20c26b1007
Document the profiler functions.
debug.txi: Document profile and profshow in the manual.
author | Daniel Kraft <d@domob.eu> |
---|---|
date | Thu, 18 Aug 2011 18:43:58 +0200 |
parents | 6590446c2498 |
children | 9db4e9b352d6 |
files | doc/interpreter/debug.txi |
diffstat | 1 files changed, 42 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) [+] |
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--- a/doc/interpreter/debug.txi +++ b/doc/interpreter/debug.txi @@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ * Breakpoints:: * Debug Mode:: * Call Stack:: +* Profiling:: @end menu @node Entering Debug Mode @@ -182,3 +183,44 @@ @DOCSTRING(dbup) @DOCSTRING(dbdown) + +@node Profiling +@section Profiling +@cindex profiler +@cindex code profiling + +Octave supports profiling of code-execution on a per-function level. If +profiling is enabled, each call to a function (supporting built-ins, +operators, functions in oct- and mex- files, user-defined functions +in Octave code and anonymous functions) is recorded while running +Octave code. After that, this data can aid in analyzing the code-behaviour, +and is in particular helpful for finding ``hot spots'' in the code +which use up a lot of computation time and are the best targets to spend +optimization efforts on. + +The main command for profiling is @code{profile}, which can be used +to start / stop the profiler and also to query collected data afterwards. +The data is returned in an Octave data-structure which can then be +examined or further processed by other routines or tools. + +@DOCSTRING(profile) + +An easy way to get an overview over the collected data is @code{profshow}. +This function takes the profiler-data returned by @code{profile} as input +and prints a flat profile, for instance: + +@example + Function Attr Time (s) Calls +---------------------------------------- + >myfib R 2.195 13529 +binary <= 0.061 13529 + binary - 0.050 13528 + binary + 0.026 6764 +@end example + +This shows that most of the runtime was spent executing the function +@samp{myfib}, and some minor proportion evaluating the listed binary operators. +Furthermore, it is shown how often the function was called and the profiler +also found out that it is recursive. + +@DOCSTRING(profshow)