These profilers have been provided for Lua:
You can also write your own through the Lua Debug library [1].
See also OptimisationTips.
[!] VersionNotice: The below code pertains to an older Lua version, Lua 4. It does not run as is under Lua 5.
Here are some methods for profiling Lua code (from Roberto) :-
A very naive way:
setcallhook(function (event) local x = getinfo(2, 'nS') print(event, x.name, x.linedefined, x.source, clock()) end)
A first improvement is to recode it in C. A second (but major) improvement is to do most computations inside the program to reduce output (see Another way).
Despite its naivity, it works. I use it frequently. Of course the clock is not very accurate, the hook itself affects all times, and the result can be huge. But is still can give you a rough idea of what is going on inside your code.
Another way:
local T = {} setcallhook (function (event) local f = getinfo(2, 'f').func local e = %T[f] if e == nil then local x = getinfo(2, 'nS') e = {name = x.name, line = x.linedefined, source = x.source, time = 0, count = 0} %T[f] = e end if event == 'call' then e.time = e.time - clock() e.count = e.count + 1 else e.time = e.time + clock() end end) -- You must call `dump' when your program ends function dump () setcallhook() -- cannot change `T' during traversal! for k,v in %T do print(v.name, v.line, v.source, v.count, v.time) end end
(Again, that in C affects much less your program.)