man(1) Manual page archive


     MONITOR(3)                                             MONITOR(3)

     NAME
          monitor - prepare execution profile

     SYNOPSIS
          monitor(lowpc, highpc, buffer, bufsize, nfunc)
          int (*lowpc)(), (*highpc)();
          short buffer[];

     DESCRIPTION
          An executable program created by `cc -p' automatically
          includes calls for monitor with default parameters; monitor
          needn't be called explicitly except to gain fine control
          over profiling.

          Monitor is an interface to profil(2). Lowpc and highpc are
          the addresses of two functions; buffer is the address of a
          (user supplied) array of bufsize short integers.  Monitor
          arranges to record a histogram of periodically sampled val-
          ues of the program counter, and of counts of calls of cer-
          tain functions, in the buffer.  The lowest address sampled
          is that of lowpc and the highest is just below highpc. At
          most nfunc call counts can be kept; only calls of functions
          compiled with the profiling option -p of cc(1) are recorded.
          For the results to be significant, especially where there
          are small, heavily used routines, it is suggested that the
          buffer be no more than a few times smaller than the range of
          locations sampled.

          To profile the entire program, it is sufficient to use

               extern etext();
               . . .
               monitor((int) 2, etext, buf, bufsize, nfunc);

          Etext lies just above all the program text, see end(3).

          To stop execution monitoring and write the results on the
          file mon.out, use

               monitor(0);

          then prof(1) can be used to examine the results.

     FILES
          mon.out

     SEE ALSO
          prof(1), profil(2), cc(1)