GNU gprof

Profiling a Program: Where Does It Spend Its Time?

This manual describes the gnu profiler, gprof, and how you can use it to determine which parts of a program are taking most of the execution time. We assume that you know how to write, compile, and execute programs. gnu gprof was written by Jay Fenlason.

This manual is for gprof (GNU Binutils) version 2.19.

This document is distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

• Introduction: What profiling means, and why it is useful.
• Compiling: How to compile your program for profiling.
• Executing: Executing your program to generate profile data
• Invoking: How to run gprof, and its options
• Output: Interpreting gprof's output
• Inaccuracy: Potential problems you should be aware of
• How do I?: Answers to common questions
• Incompatibilities: (between gnu gprof and Unix gprof.)
• Details: Details of how profiling is done
• GNU Free Documentation License: GNU Free Documentation License