dwww Home | Manual pages | Find package

profil(3)                   Library Functions Manual                  profil(3)

NAME
       profil - execution time profile

LIBRARY
       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS
       #include <unistd.h>

       int profil(unsigned short *buf, size_t bufsiz,
                  size_t offset, unsigned int scale);

   Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

       profil():
           Since glibc 2.21:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE
           In glibc 2.19 and 2.20:
               _DEFAULT_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)
           Up to and including glibc 2.19:
               _BSD_SOURCE || (_XOPEN_SOURCE && _XOPEN_SOURCE < 500)

DESCRIPTION
       This  routine  provides  a  means to find out in what areas your program
       spends most of its time.  The argument buf points  to  bufsiz  bytes  of
       core.  Every virtual 10 milliseconds, the user's program counter (PC) is
       examined: offset is subtracted and the result is multiplied by scale and
       divided  by 65536.  If the resulting value is less than bufsiz, then the
       corresponding entry in buf is incremented.  If buf is NULL, profiling is
       disabled.

RETURN VALUE
       Zero is always returned.

ATTRIBUTES
       For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
       ┌──────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────┬───────────┐
       │ Interface                                Attribute     Value     │
       ├──────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────┼───────────┤
       │ profil()                                 │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe │
       └──────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴───────────┘

STANDARDS
       None.

HISTORY
       Similar to a call in SVr4.

BUGS
       profil() cannot be used on a program that also uses ITIMER_PROF interval
       timers (see setitimer(2)).

       True kernel profiling provides more accurate results.

SEE ALSO
       gprof(1), sprof(1), setitimer(2), sigaction(2), signal(2)

Linux man-pages 6.9.1              2024-05-02                         profil(3)

Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:14:04 CET 2025.