10.39 The Gauge Profiling Tool—library(gauge)

The Gauge library package is a graphical interface to the SICStus built-in predicates profile_data/4 and profile_reset/1. See Execution Profiling, for more information about execution profiling. The interface is based on Tcl/Tk (see lib-tcltk).

view(:Spec)

Creates a graphical user interface for viewing the profile data for the predicates covered by the generalized predicate spec Spec. For example, the call view([user:_,m2:_]), will bring up the graphical user interface on the predicates contained in the modules user and m2. When the display first comes up it is blank except for the control panel. A screen shot is shown below.

The menus and buttons on the control panel are used as follows:

Specification

Selects what statistics to display. One of:

Calls

The number of times a predicate was called.

Instructions

The number of abstract instructions executed, plus two times the number of choice point accesses.

Choicepoints

Number of choicepoints accessed (saved or restored).

Resolution

Selects the level of resolution. One of:

Predicate

Compute results on a per predicate basis. Predicates are denoted Module:Name/Arity.

Clause

Compute results on a per clause basis. Clauses are denoted Module:Name/Arity/ClauseNo.

Sort Order

Selects the sort order of the histogram. One of:

Alphabetic

Sort the bars in alphabetic order.

Descending values

Sort the bars by descending values.

Ascending values

Sort the bars by ascending values.

Top 40

Show just the 40 highest values in descending order.

Scale

Controls the scaling of the bars. One of:

Linear

Display values with a linear scale.

Logarithmic

Display values with a logarithmic scale.

Show

Controls whether to show bars with zero counts. One of:

All

Show all values in the histogram.

No zero values

Show only non-zero values.

Font

The font used in the histogram chart.

Calculate

Calculates the values according to the current settings. The values are displayed in a histogram.

Reset

The execution counters of the selected predicates and clauses are reset.

Print

A choice of printing the histogram on a Postscript printer, or to a file.

Help

Shows a help text.

Quit

Quits Gauge and closes its windows.

By clicking on the bars of the histogram, the figures are displayed in the Value Info window.