Python in a Nutshell

Name

run

Synopsis

run(code,filename=None)

code is a string such as you could use with statement exec, normally a call to the main function of the program you’re profiling. filename is the path of a file that run creates or rewrites with profile data. Usually you call run a few times, specifying different filenames, and possibly different arguments to your program’s main function, in order to exercise various program parts proportionately. Then, you use module pstats to display collated results.

You may call run without a filename to obtain a summary report, similar to the one module pstats could give you, directly on standard output. However, this approach gives no control at all over output format, nor does it offer any way to consolidate several runs into one report. In practice, you rarely use this feature: collecting profile data into files is generally preferable.

Module profile also supplies class Profile, mentioned in the next section. By instantiating Profile directly, you can access advanced functionality, such as the ability to run a command in specified local and global dictionaries. I do not cover such advanced functionality of class profile.Profile further in this book.