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			4.5 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
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			102 lines
		
	
	
	
		
			4.5 KiB
		
	
	
	
		
			HTML
		
	
	
	
	
	
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								<html lang="en">
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								<title>Introduction - GNU gprof</title>
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								<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
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								<meta name="description" content="GNU gprof">
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								<!--
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								This file documents the gprof profiler of the GNU system.
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								Copyright (C) 1988, 92, 97, 98, 99, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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								Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
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								under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1
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								or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
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								with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no
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								Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of the license is included in the
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								section entitled ``GNU Free Documentation License''.
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								</head>
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								<body>
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								<div class="node">
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								<p>
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								<a name="Introduction"></a>Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Compiling.html#Compiling">Compiling</a>,
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								Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="index.html#Top">Top</a>,
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								Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="index.html#Top">Top</a>
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								<hr><br>
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								</div>
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								<h2 class="chapter">1 Introduction to Profiling</h2>
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								<p>Profiling allows you to learn where your program spent its time and which
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								functions called which other functions while it was executing.  This
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								information can show you which pieces of your program are slower than you
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								expected, and might be candidates for rewriting to make your program
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								execute faster.  It can also tell you which functions are being called more
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								or less often than you expected.  This may help you spot bugs that had
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								otherwise been unnoticed.
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								   <p>Since the profiler uses information collected during the actual execution
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								of your program, it can be used on programs that are too large or too
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								complex to analyze by reading the source.  However, how your program is run
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								will affect the information that shows up in the profile data.  If you
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								don't use some feature of your program while it is being profiled, no
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								profile information will be generated for that feature.
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								   <p>Profiling has several steps:
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								     <ul>
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								<li>You must compile and link your program with profiling enabled. 
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								See <a href="Compiling.html#Compiling">Compiling a Program for Profiling</a>.
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								     <li>You must execute your program to generate a profile data file. 
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								See <a href="Executing.html#Executing">Executing the Program</a>.
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								     <li>You must run <code>gprof</code> to analyze the profile data. 
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								See <a href="Invoking.html#Invoking"><code>gprof</code> Command Summary</a>. 
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								</ul>
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								   <p>The next three chapters explain these steps in greater detail.
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								<!-- man begin DESCRIPTION -->
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								<p>Several forms of output are available from the analysis.
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								   <p>The <dfn>flat profile</dfn> shows how much time your program spent in each function,
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								and how many times that function was called.  If you simply want to know
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								which functions burn most of the cycles, it is stated concisely here. 
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								See <a href="Flat-Profile.html#Flat-Profile">The Flat Profile</a>.
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								   <p>The <dfn>call graph</dfn> shows, for each function, which functions called it, which
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								other functions it called, and how many times.  There is also an estimate
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								of how much time was spent in the subroutines of each function.  This can
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								suggest places where you might try to eliminate function calls that use a
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								lot of time.  See <a href="Call-Graph.html#Call-Graph">The Call Graph</a>.
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								   <p>The <dfn>annotated source</dfn> listing is a copy of the program's
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								source code, labeled with the number of times each line of the
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								program was executed.  See <a href="Annotated-Source.html#Annotated-Source">The Annotated Source Listing</a>. 
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								<!-- man end -->
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								   <p>To better understand how profiling works, you may wish to read
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								a description of its implementation. 
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								See <a href="Implementation.html#Implementation">Implementation of Profiling</a>.
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								   </body></html>
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