Module CProfile

This program is a small time and allocation profiler for Objective Caml

Adapted from Christophe Raffalli

To use it, link it with the program you want to profile.

To trace a function "f" you first need to get a key for it by using :

let fkey = declare_profile "f";;

(the string is used to print the profile information). Warning: this function does a side effect. Choose the ident you want instead "fkey".

Then if the function has ONE argument add the following just after the definition of "f" or just after the declare_profile if this one follows the definition of f.

let f = profile1 fkey f;;

If f has two arguments do the same with profile2, idem with 3, ... For more arguments than provided in this module, make a new copy of function profile and adapt for the needed arity.

If you want to profile two mutually recursive functions, you had better to rename them :

let fkey = declare_profile "f";; let gkey = declare_profile "g";; let f' = .... f' ... g' and g' = .... f' .... g' ;;

let f = profile fkey f';; let g = profile gkey g';;

Before the program quits, you should call "print_profile ();;". It produces a result of the following kind:

Function name Own time Total time Own alloc Tot. alloc Calls f 0.28 0.47 116 116 5 4 h 0.19 0.19 0 0 4 0 g 0.00 0.00 0 0 0 0 others 0.00 0.47 392 508 9 Est. overhead/total 0.00 0.47 2752 3260

• The first column is the name of the function.
• The third column give the time (utime + stime) spent inside the function.
• The second column give the time spend inside the function minus the time spend in other profiled functions called by it
• The 4th and 5th columns give the same for allocated words
• The 6th and 7th columns give the number of calls to the function and the number of calls to profiled functions inside the scope of the current function

Remarks:

• If a function has a polymorphic type, you need to supply it with at least one argument as in "let f a = profile1 fkey f a;;" (instead of "let f = profile1 fkey f;;") in order to get generalization of the type.
• Each line of the form "let f a = profile1 fkey f a;;" in your code counts for 5 words and each line of the form "let f = profile1 fkey f;;" counts for 6 words (a word is 4 or 8 bytes according to the architecture); this is counted for "others".
• Time fields for functions doing a little job is usually non pertinent.

i

Some utilities to compute the logical and physical sizes and depth of ML objects