SYNOPSIS

perl -d:Profile program.pl
less prof.out

DESCRIPTION

The Devel::Profile package is a Perl code profiler. This will collect information on the execution time of a Perl script and of the subs in that script. This information can be used to determine which subroutines are using the most time and which subroutines are being called most often.

To profile a Perl script, run the perl interpreter with the -d debugging switch. The profiler uses the debugging hooks. So to profile script test.pl the following command should be used:

        perl -d:Profile test.pl

When the script terminates (or periodicly while running, see ENVIRONMENT) the profiler will dump the profile information to a file called prof.out. This file is human-readable, no additional tool is required to read it.

Note: Statistics are kept per sub, not per line.

OUTPUT FORMAT

example output:

    time elapsed (wall):   86.8212
    time running program:  65.7657  (75.75%)
    time profiling (est.): 21.0556  (24.25%)
    number of calls:       647248
    
    %Time    Sec.     #calls   sec/call  F  name
    31.74   20.8770     2306   0.009053     Configable::init_from_config
    20.09   13.2116   144638   0.000091     Configable::init_field_from_config
    17.49   11.5043   297997   0.000039     Configable::has_attr
     8.22    5.4028      312   0.017317     MonEl::recycle
     7.54    4.9570    64239   0.000077     Configable::inherit
     5.02    3.3042   101289   0.000033     MonEl::unique
    [...]

This is a small summary, followed by one line per sub.

time elapsed (wall)

This is the total time elapsed.

time running program

This is the amount of time spent running your program.

time profiling

This is the amount of time wasted due to profiler overhead.

number of calls

This is the total number of subroutine calls your program made.

Followed by one line per subroutine.

name

The name of the subroutine.

%Time

The percentage of the total program runtime used by this subroutine.

Sec.

The total number of seconds used by this subroutine.

#calls

The number of times this subroutine was called.

sec/call

The average number of seconds this subroutines takes each time it is called.

F

Flags.

"*"

pseudo-function to account for otherwise unacounted for time.

"?"

At least one call of this subroutine did not return (typically because of an "exit", or "die"). The statistics for it may be slightly off.

"x"

At least one call of this subroutine trapped an exception. The statistics for it may be slightly off.

LONG RUNNING PROGRAMS

This module was written so that the author could profile a large long-running (daemon) program. Since normally, this program never exited, saving profiling data only at program exit was not an interesting option. This module will save profiling data periodically based on $PERL_PROFILE_SAVETIME, or the program being profiled can call "DB::save()" at any time. This allows you to watch your profiling data while the program is running.

The above program also had a very large startup phase (reading config files, building data structures, etc), the author wanted to see profiling data for the startup phase, and for the running phase separately. The running program can call "DB::reset()" to save the profiling data and reset the statistics. Once reset, only ``stuff'' that happens from that point on will be reflected in the profile data file.

By default, reset is attached to the signal handler for "SIGUSR2". Using a perl built with ``safe signal handling'' (5.8.0 and higher), you may safely send this signal to control profiling.

BUT I WANT INCLUSIVE TIMES NOT EXCLUSIVE TIMES

Please see the spin-off module Devel::DProfLB.

LICENSE

This software may be copied and distributed under the terms found in the Perl ``Artistic License''.

A copy of the ``Artistic License'' may be found in the standard Perl distribution.

AUTHOR

Jeff Weisberg - http://www.tcp4me.com/