Profiling Output Explanation and Context Description

specific function: > profile start /tmp/vimprofile profile func MyFunc Here is an example of the output, with line numbers prepended for the explanation: 1 FUNCTION Test2() ~ 2 Called 1 time ~ 3 Total time: 0.155251 ~ 4 Self time: 0.002006 ~ 5 ~ 6 count total (s) self (s) ~ 7 9 0.000096 for i in range(8) ~ 8 8 0.153655 0.000410 call Test3() ~ 9 8 0.000070 endfor ~ 10 " Ask a question ~ 11 1 0.001341 echo input("give me an answer: ") ~ The header (lines 1-4) gives the time for the whole function. The "Total" time is the time passed while the function was executing. The "Self" time is the "Total" time reduced by time spent in: - other user defined functions - sourced scripts - executed autocommands - external (shell) commands Lines 7-11 show the time spent in each executed line. Lines that are not executed do not count. Thus a comment line is never counted. The Count column shows how many times a line was executed. Note that the "for" command in line 7 is executed one more time as the following lines. That is because the line is also executed to detect the end of the loop. The time Vim spends waiting for user input isn't counted at all. Thus how long you take to respond to the input() prompt is irrelevant. Profiling should give a good indication of where time is spent, but keep in mind there are various things that may clobber the results: - Real elapsed time is measured, if other processes are busy they may cause delays at unpredictable moments. You may want to run the profiling several times and use the lowest results. - If you have several commands in one line you only get one time. Split the line to see the time for the individual commands. - The time of the lines added up is mostly less than the time of the whole function. There is some overhead in between. - Functions that are deleted before Vim exits will not produce profiling information. You can check the |v:profiling| variable if needed: > :if !v:profiling : delfunc MyFunc :endif < - Profiling may give weird results on multi-processor systems, when sleep mode kicks in or the processor frequency is reduced to save power. - The "self" time is wrong when a function is used recursively. ============================================================================== Context *Context* *context* The editor state is represented by the Context concept. This includes things like the current |jumplist|, values of |registers|, and more, described below. *context-types* The following Context items are supported: "jumps" |jumplist| "regs" |registers| "bufs" |buffer-list| "gvars" |global-variable|s "sfuncs" |script-local| functions "funcs" global and |script-local| functions *context-dict* Context objects are dictionaries with the following key-value pairs: - "jumps", "regs", "bufs", "gvars": |readfile()|-style |List| representation of corresponding msgpack objects (see |msgpackdump()| and |msgpackparse()|). - "funcs" (includes |script-local| functions as well): |List| of |:function| definitions. *context-stack* An initially-empty internal Context stack is maintained by the ctx-family functions (see |ctx-functions|). vim:tw=78:ts=8:noet:ft=help:norl:

This section explains a profiling output example in Vim, detailing the interpretation of 'Total time,' 'Self time,' and 'Count' for each executed line. It also discusses factors that might affect profiling results, such as external processes, multiple commands on one line, function deletion, and system configurations. The section then transitions to describing the 'Context' concept in Vim, covering context types like 'jumps,' 'regs,' 'bufs,' 'gvars,' 'sfuncs,' and 'funcs,' and how these are represented as dictionaries and maintained in an internal Context stack.