Profiling a program is a way to take a detailed look at the execution time of individual pieces of the program. When you want to optimize code it’s important to use a profiler first so that you know where your optimization effort would be most beneficial.

I recently demonstrated profiling Python code using the built-in tools, line_profiler, and IPython’s “magic” hooks into those tools. RunSnakeRun also made an appearance.

As usual I used the IPython notebook and you can get the .ipynb file and the PDF, or see it directly.

More info on using the built-in profiler and pstats modules is available via the Python Module of the Week: http://www.doughellmann.com/PyMOTW/profile/index.html.