11 The Profiler

The LispWorks profiler provides a way of empirically monitoring execution characteristics of Lisp programs. The data obtained can help to improve the efficiency of a Lisp program by highlighting those procedures which are commonly used or particularly slow, and which would therefore benefit from optimization effort.

For complete details of the functions and symbols introduced in this chapter, see the LispWorks Reference Manual .

11.1 What the profiler does

11.2 Setting up the profiler

11.3 Running the profiler

11.4 Interpretation of profiling results

11.5 Profiling pitfalls

11.6 Profiling and garbage collection