Re: Sample Matlab profiler output

[Richard]

On 14/07/2011 18:55, Daniel Kraft wrote:
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> On 07/14/11 19:24, Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso wrote:
> > > From asking around in ##matlab in IRC, someone helpfully offered the
> > following profiler output from Matlab:
> >
> >       http://jordi.platinum.linux.pl/octave/matlab-profiler-output.tar.gz
> >
> > Note that it also produces HTML output, but we can worry about that at
> > the very last or perhaps even after the GSoC project. We certainly
> > don't need to produce identical HTML output. The .mat is in two
> > formats, but I think Octave can only load stuff-v7.mat, or else I'm
> > doing something wrong with my Octave build.
> Thanks!  From the documentation, it seems that 'profile' doesn't even
> generate any 'human usable' output itself; just a structure of profiling
> data, similarly to what profiler_data in my last patch does.
>
> The HTML is seemingly generated by profsave, but if you think so we can
> very well delay implementing this function until later.  Currently I'm
> working on implementing parts of 'profile', and later I'll try to add
> missing backend information like number of calls to a function, whether
> it is recursive or not and the child/parent functions.  That seems to be
> straight-forward and easy to do.
>
> In order to generate useful output even without profsave, what do you
> think about extending either profile via, e.g., profile('print') to
> print a flat-profile as ASCII table of the hottest functions?  (Possibly
> with number of functions to print specifiable as argument)?  That's
> exactly the sort of output I would probably expect and use most often,
> but I'm also using gprof on the command-line.
>
> Or maybe it would be nicer to leave the 'profile' function the way it
> is, and add 'profshow' to do the job?  The workflow would then be
> something like:
>
> profile on;
> ...do something...
> profile off;
> data = profile ('info');
> profshow (data);
>
> What do you (and the others) think about that?  Or is there even a
> Matlab interface that does neither print HTML nor use the GUI, which we
> could try to replicate?  I didn't find one.
>
> Yours,
> Daniel
>
> PS: Right now, my .m file is in "scripts/general".  Is this ok?  Or
> should we create possibly a dedicated directory for the profiler, which
> would later contain profile, profshow, profsave and possibly other
> routines for other output formats (if we don't use profsave for that
> purpose)?
>
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Apologies if everything I'm about the state is already known, but in 
case it isn't...

When you use the profiler in Matlab it is generally done through a 
standalone GUI which calls profile for you.

There is a box where you can paste the code to be profiled, e.g. a 
function with some arguments, or a script file name etc.

This GUI then loads the html output from profile and presents it as a 
sort of browsable website. At the top level page is a list of the 
functions called and a description of the time spent in each function 
broken down into total time and self time, i.e. the time spent executing 
statements in that function as opposed to time spent in subfunctions.

You can then click on links to child functions which takes you to a page 
with info similar to the top level output for that function, then below 
this, the function file is displayed with various pieces of information 
added such as the time spent on each line, and the most heavily used 
lines highlighted in red, unused lines greyed out etc. You can also 
click on the function line to open to that line in the matlab editor.

I've attached some screenshots of this, but the following links:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/matlab_env/f9-17018.html

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/matlab_env/f9-17018.html#f9-17206

and

http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/matlab_env/f9-17018.html#f9-26561

contain more info and images.

To get the output you can call profile with 'info' according to the manual

personally I would leave profile as it is (since one of aims of octave 
is to match the matlab syntax in most cases) and have a separate 
function do the text display, or alternatively add an option to 
profshow. If doing a text display I would consider having an option of a 
text file to output to, as the results could be a hell of a lot of text 
to display in the output window in many cases.

Richard



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