[XML-SIG] Python XML Profiling

Dave zhu_dave at yahoo.com
Tue Oct 25 21:21:10 CEST 2005


Hello All,

I'm trying to profile a Python XML program, but
getting confused because of the results. It basically
traverses an XML file. The gprof profiling results are
as follows:

% Time  Self Seconds  Calls  Name 
34.8    0.63                   _moncount
 10.5   0.19                   mcount
 10.5   0.19    20,427    _PyEval_EvalFrame
  3.9    0.07   275,249   _lookdict_string  
  ...
  0.0    0.00    11,753   __PyString_Eq

As I understand, _moncount and mcount are related with
gprof and _PyEval_EvalFrame is the main interpreter
loop. It seems this simple program spends a lot of
time in the interpreter loop. I thought a program
which handles XML would spend a lot of time on string
processing, i.e. string matching. In this case, it
spends just a little time on _lookdict_string, which
does not even do string matching. However, the string
matching function (__PyString_Eq) takes negligible
time. How could this be possible? How does it achieve
XML processing without exact string matching?

Thank you for your help!

Dave


		
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