Adventures in Optimization.. When a Ruby primitive is the Hog.

So you've run your code with -rprofile or require 'profile'

And the answer was IO.each_line

Which is a bit like saying the answer to the Question of Life, the
Universe and Everything is "42".

a) You've used IO.each_line in many places.
b) There is nothing you can do to speed it up.

Enter Carter's Canny Primitive Profiler..


   $f=Hash.new(0)

   CUNNING_MIN_CARE = 1 # Only care about stack frames that have been called
                          # at least CUNNING_MIN_CARE times
   CUNNING_DEPTH    = 2   # Profile base on CUNNING_DEPTH number of
                          # stack frames of this calls that that calls... that
                          # calls Array.each
                          # Make it -1 if you want the lot.

   at_exit{
      $f.keys.find_all{|k| $f[k] >= CUNNING_MIN_CARE}.sort_by{|k| $f[k]}.each{|k|
         puts "\n\n#{k} >>>#{$f[k]}<<<"
      }
   }

class IO
    alias_method :orig_each_line, :each_line
    def each_line(&block)
       i=0
       orig_each_line do |l|
          block.call(l)
          i+= 1
       end
    ensure
       $f[caller(1)[0..CUNNING_DEPTH].join("\n")] += i
    end
end

On exit you can _see_ which invocation of each_line via which path was
the busiest!

Of course, sometimes we don't actually care about CPU time. The by
several orders of magnitude, the slowest operation in a modern PC is
pulling stuff of the disk.

So how about this variation on the Theme...
class IO
    alias_method :orig_read, :read
    def read(*arg)
       start = Time.now
       orig_read(*arg)
    ensure
       $f[caller(1)[0..CUNNING_DEPTH].join("\n")] += Time.now - start
    end
end

I love Ruby :-)


John Carter                             Phone : [phone]
Tait Electronics                        Fax   : [phone]
PO Box 1645 Christchurch                Email : [e-mail]
New Zealand