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+To: partain@dcs.gla.ac.uk
+cc: areid@dcs.gla.ac.uk, andy@dcs.gla.ac.uk
+Subject: Heap profiling programs
+Date: Thu, 09 Dec 93 17:33:09 +0000
+From: Alastair Reid <areid@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
+
+
+I've hacked up a couple of programs which it might be worth putting in
+the next ghc distribution.  They are:
+
+graph:	
+
+  Draws a continuous graph of any one column of the statistics
+  produced using the "+RTS -Sstderr" option.
+
+  I'm not convinced this is astonishingly useful since I'm yet to
+  learn anything useful from (manually) examining these statistics.
+  (Although I do vaguely remember asking Patrick if the heap profiler
+  could do stack profiles too.)
+
+  A typical usage is:
+
+    slife 2 Unis/gardenofeden +RTS -Sstderr -H1M -RTS |& graph 2
+
+  which draws a graph of the third column (ie column 2!) of the
+  stats.
+
+  (btw is there a neater way of connecting stderr to graph's stdin?)
+
+hpView2:	
+
+  Draws a continuous graph of the statistics reported by the "+RTS -h"
+  option.
+
+  Since I understand what the figures mean, this seems to be the more
+  useful program.
+
+  A typical usage is:
+
+    mkfifo slife.hp
+    hpView2 slife.hp Main:mkQuad &
+    slife 2 Unis/gardenofeden +RTS -h -i0.1 -RTS 
+    rm slife.hp
+
+  which draws a graph of the total heap usage and the usage for Main:mkQuad.
+
+
+Minor problems:
+
+The code is a gross hack... but it works.  (Maybe distribute in rot13
+format so that you don't get accidentally get exposed to obscene code
+:-))
+
+The code uses a variant of Andy's picoXlibrary (which he was talking
+about releasing but maybe isn't ready to do yet.)
+
+Also, there are lots of obvious extensions etc which could be made but
+haven't yet...  (The major one is being able to set the initial
+scale-factor for displaying the graphs or being able to graph several
+stats at once without having to tee.)
+
+
+Hope you find them interesting.
+
+Alastair
+
+ps Code is in ~areid/hask/Life and should be readable/executable.