4.3BSD/usr/man/man3/monitor.3

.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\"
.\"	@(#)monitor.3	6.1 (Berkeley) 5/15/85
.\"
.TH MONITOR 3  "May 15, 1985"
.UC 4
.SH NAME
monitor, monstartup, moncontrol \- prepare execution profile
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B monitor(lowpc, highpc, buffer, bufsize, nfunc)
.B int (*lowpc)(), (*highpc)();
.B short buffer[];
.sp
.B monstartup(lowpc, highpc)
.B int (*lowpc)(), (*highpc)();
.sp
.B moncontrol(mode)
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
There are two different forms of monitoring available:
An executable program created by:
.IP  "	cc \-p . . ."
.LP
automatically includes calls for the 
.IR prof (1)
monitor and includes an initial call to its start-up routine
.I monstartup
with default parameters;
.I monitor
need not be called explicitly except to gain fine control over profil 
buffer allocation.
An executable program created by:
.IP  "	cc \-pg . . ."
.LP
automatically includes calls for the
.IR gprof (1)
monitor.
.PP
.I Monstartup
is a high level interface to
.IR profil (2).
.I Lowpc
and
.I highpc
specify the address range that is to be sampled; the lowest address sampled
is that of
.I lowpc
and the highest is just below
.IR highpc .
.I Monstartup
allocates space using 
.IR sbrk (2)
and passes it to
.I monitor
(see below) to record a histogram of periodically sampled values of
the program counter, and of counts of calls of certain functions, in the buffer.
Only calls of functions compiled with the profiling option
.B \-p
of
.IR cc (1)
are recorded.
.PP
To profile the entire program, it is sufficient to use
.PP
.nf
	extern etext();
	. . .
	monstartup((int) 2, etext);
.fi
.PP
.I Etext
lies just above all the program text, see
.IR end (3).
.PP
To stop execution monitoring and write the results on the file
.I mon.out,
use
.PP
	monitor(0);
.LP
then
.IR prof (1)
can be used to examine the results.
.PP
.I Moncontrol
is used to selectively control profiling within a program.
This works with either 
.IR prof (1)
or
.IR gprof (1)
type profiling.
When the program starts, profiling begins.
To stop the collection of histogram ticks and call counts use
.IR moncontrol (0);
to resume the collection of histogram ticks and call counts use
.IR moncontrol (1).
This allows the cost of particular operations to be measured.
Note that an output file will be produced upon program exit
irregardless of the state of 
.I moncontrol.
.PP
.I Monitor
is a low level interface to
.IR profil (2).
.I Lowpc
and
.I highpc
are the addresses of two functions;
.I buffer
is the address of a (user supplied) array of
.I bufsize
short integers.  At most
.I nfunc
call counts can be kept.
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.
.I Monitor
divides the buffer into space to record the histogram
of program counter samples over the range
.I lowpc
to
.IR highpc ,
and space to record call counts of functions compiled with the 
.B \-p
option to
.IR cc (1).
.PP
To profile the entire program, it is sufficient to use
.PP
.nf
	extern etext();
	. . .
	monitor((int) 2, etext, buf, bufsize, nfunc);
.fi
.SH FILES
mon.out
.SH "SEE ALSO"
cc(1), prof(1), gprof(1), profil(2), sbrk(2)