gprof: Callers

1 
1 5.2.2 Lines for a Function's Callers
1 ------------------------------------
1 
1 A function's entry has a line for each function it was called by.  These
1 lines' fields correspond to the fields of the primary line, but their
1 meanings are different because of the difference in context.
1 
1    For reference, we repeat two lines from the entry for the function
1 'report', the primary line and one caller-line preceding it, together
1 with the heading line that shows the names of the fields:
1 
1      index  % time    self  children called     name
1      ...
1                      0.00    0.05       1/1           main [2]
1      [3]    100.0    0.00    0.05       1         report [3]
1 
1    Here are the meanings of the fields in the caller-line for 'report'
1 called from 'main':
1 
1 'self'
1      An estimate of the amount of time spent in 'report' itself when it
1      was called from 'main'.
1 
1 'children'
1      An estimate of the amount of time spent in subroutines of 'report'
1      when 'report' was called from 'main'.
1 
1      The sum of the 'self' and 'children' fields is an estimate of the
1      amount of time spent within calls to 'report' from 'main'.
1 
1 'called'
1      Two numbers: the number of times 'report' was called from 'main',
1      followed by the total number of non-recursive calls to 'report'
1      from all its callers.
1 
1 'name and index number'
1      The name of the caller of 'report' to which this line applies,
1      followed by the caller's index number.
1 
1      Not all functions have entries in the call graph; some options to
1      'gprof' request the omission of certain functions.  When a caller
1      has no entry of its own, it still has caller-lines in the entries
1      of the functions it calls.
1 
1      If the caller is part of a recursion cycle, the cycle number is
1      printed between the name and the index number.
1 
1    If the identity of the callers of a function cannot be determined, a
1 dummy caller-line is printed which has '<spontaneous>' as the "caller's
1 name" and all other fields blank.  This can happen for signal handlers.
1