Profiling from *within* a module

[Leo Breebaart]

Hi all,

I'm new to Python, and I have hit upon something that I just cannot seem
to solve or understand using the available documentation.

Given the file 'leotest.py':

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
""" leotest.py - test ways of profiling python functions. """

def foo():
    pass

def test():
    for i in range(10000): foo()

def myprofile():
    import profile
    profile.run('test()')

if __name__ == "__main__":
    myprofile()
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If I call this as "python leotest.py", everything works and a profile
is generated:

  [cygnus] % python leotest.py
           10003 function calls in 0.040 CPU seconds
           [...]

Profiling from the Python interpreter is also no problem:

  >>> import profile
  >>> import leotest
  >>> profile.run('leotest.test()')
           10003 function calls in 0.030 CPU seconds
      [...]

But try to have the profile called from 'within' the module, and Python
just doesn't seem to want to know:

  >>> leotest.myprofile()
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
    File "leotest.py", line 11, in myprofile
      profile.run('test()')
    File "/usr/lib/python2.3/profile.py", line 71, in run
      prof = prof.run(statement)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.3/profile.py", line 403, in run
      return self.runctx(cmd, dict, dict)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.3/profile.py", line 409, in runctx
      exec cmd in globals, locals
    File "<string>", line 1, in ?
  NameError: name 'test' is not defined


I think I'm simply misunderstanding how modules and functions and scopes
interact in Python, but I can't discover where exactly I'm going wrong
-- and I can't find a workaround either. Surely it is *somehow* possible
to do what I want, i.e. initiate the profile from within the module
itself? After all, it works in the command-line version!

Would anybody here be willing to explain this behaviour to me?

Many thanks in advance, 

-- 
Leo Breebaart  <leo at lspace.org>