12 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 .

12.1 What the profiler does

12.2 Setting up the profiler

12.3 Running the profiler

12.4 Profiler output

12.5 Interpretation of profiling results

12.6 Profiling pitfalls

12.7 Profiling and garbage collection