The profile module exports convenience functions for run() and runctx(), which wrap the corresponding methods of the Profile object.  But perhaps the most useful method, runcall(), is not wrapped. :-(

While we're on profile convenience features, how about adding two context managers:

- one that just profiles a block and prints the profile (or dumps the data to a file)

- one that takes a Profile instance and enables profiling to that instance

E.g. (1)

with cProfile.runblock([file]):
    <your code here>

or (2)

p = cProfile.Profile()
with p:
    <your code here>

Also a decorator corresponding to (1):

@cProfile.runfunc([filename])
def myfunc(args):
    <stuff>

+1 for runcall() and the context manager.

Antoine, what about the decorator? I've come across a few use cases.

--Guido van Rossum (sent from Android phone)
On Feb 10, 2013 10:14 AM, "Antoine Pitrou" <report@bugs.python.org> wrote:

>
> Antoine Pitrou added the comment:
>
> +1 for runcall() and the context manager.
>
> ----------
> nosy: +pitrou
>
> _______________________________________
> Python tracker <report@bugs.python.org>
> <http://bugs.python.org/issue17130>
> _______________________________________
>

See issue 9285 in which I wrote a decorator for profile/cProfile.
That can be modified to work both as a decorator or a context manager by using contextlib.contextmanager.
Shall I continue in issue 9285 and rewrite that patch?

Sure, I will comment on that issue.

> Antoine, what about the decorator? I've come across a few use cases.

I don't know, I'm thinking that "there should be one obvious way to do
it" :-)
By that I mean that the context manager is more generic than the
decorator. Or do you want to decorate functions from an external
library?

If I quickly want to profile one function, with the decorator I have to
insert a with-statement in its body and mess with the indentation of the
entire body. With a decorator it's just a one-line insertion.

Ah, fair enough.

As for runcall() we haven't the ability to freely support kwargs *and* filename.
I see two possibilities.
Kill kwargs, as such:

+def runcall(func, *args, filename=None, sort=-1):
+    """Run func(*args) under profiler, optionally saving results in
+    filename.
+    """

...or make 'filename_' and 'sort_' two special name kwargs to be used as in:

>>> runcall(fun, foo=1, bar=2, filename_='...')

Also, there might be some value in adding 'strip_dirs' argument to those functions (run/runctx/runcall).

Hello, first patch, be kind.

I opted for option 2 so there is top keywords filename_ and sort_ filtered out before calling func.

The test in test_profile seems to call runctx but runcall and run are never tested. Not sure if this is missing or intended.

I already posted a patch in issue 9285.
Maybe we should close this one as a duplicate.

Look at that. Sorry, totally missed it.