5.2.3 Lines for a Function’s Subroutines

A function’s entry has a line for each of its subroutines—in other words, a line for each other function that it called. These lines’ fields correspond to the fields of the primary line, but their meanings are different because of the difference in context.

For reference, we repeat two lines from the entry for the function main, the primary line and a line for a subroutine, together with the heading line that shows the names of the fields:

index  % time    self  children called     name
…
[2]    100.0    0.00    0.05       1         main [2]
                0.00    0.05       1/1           report [3]

Here are the meanings of the fields in the subroutine-line for main calling report:

self

An estimate of the amount of time spent directly within report when report was called from main.

children

An estimate of the amount of time spent in subroutines of report when report was called from main.

The sum of the self and children fields is an estimate of the total time spent in calls to report from main.

called

Two numbers, the number of calls to report from main followed by the total number of non-recursive calls to report. This ratio is used to determine how much of report’s self and children time gets credited to main. See Estimating children Times.

name

The name of the subroutine of main to which this line applies, followed by the subroutine’s index number.

If the caller is part of a recursion cycle, the cycle number is printed between the name and the index number.