texprof(1) General Commands Manual texprof(1)
NAME
texprof - A profiler for TeX source files
SYNOPSIS
texprof [options] [&format] [file|\commands]
DESCRIPTION
Run the TeX profiler on file, usually creating file.dvi and file.tprof.
If the file argument has no extension, ".tex" will be appended to it.
Instead of a file name, a list of TeX commands can be given, the first
of which must start with a backslash. With a &format argument, the TeX
profiler uses a different set of precompiled commands, contained in
format.fmt; it is usually better to use the -fmt format option instead.
The TeX profiler is a version of TeX that measures the time TeX needs
to execute individual input lines or macros. It writes the collected
data to a file with extension .tprof. A separate program, texprofile
(see texprofile(1)), is used to display the content of a .tprof file in
a readable form.
The typical use of the TeX profiler is with pre generated formats. The
texprof command uses the equivalent of the plain TeX format, and the
latexprof command uses the equivalent of the LaTeX format. To
investigate the timing of macros targeted to pdftex or pdflatex, you
can use pdftexprof or pdflatexprof.
The TeX profiler's handling of its command-line arguments is similar to
that of the other TeX programs in the web2c implementation.
OPTIONS
This version of the TeX profiler understands the following command line
options.
-cnf-line string
Parse string as a texmf.cnf configuration line. See the
Kpathsea manual.
-etex Enable the e-TeX extensions. This option is only effective in
combination with -ini. See etex(1).
-file-line-error
Print error messages in the form file:line:error which is
similar to the way many compilers format them.
-no-file-line-error
Disable printing error messages in the file:line:error style.
-fmt format
Use format as the name of the format to be used, instead of the
name by which the TeX profiler was called or a %& line.
-help Print help message and exit.
-ini Start in INI mode, which is used to dump formats. The INI mode
can be used for typesetting, but no format is preloaded, and
basic initializations like setting catcodes may be required.
-interaction mode
Sets the interaction mode. The mode can be either batchmode,
nonstopmode, scrollmode, and errorstopmode. The meaning of
these modes is the same as that of the corresponding \commands.
-jobname name
Use name for the job name, instead of deriving it from the name
of the input file.
-kpathsea-debug bitmask
Sets path searching debugging flags according to the bitmask.
See the Kpathsea manual for details.
-ltx Enable the LaTeX extensions. This option is only effective in
combination with -ini. See latex(1).
-mktex fmt
Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex, tfm, fmt, or pk.
-no-mktex fmt
Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex, tfm, fmt, or pk.
-output-directory directory
Write output files in directory instead of the current
directory. Look up input files in directory first, then along
the normal search path.
-parse-first-line
If the first line of the main input file begins with %& parse it
to look for a dump name.
-no-parse-first-line
Disable parsing of the first line of the main input file.
-pdf Enable the simulation of common pdftex primitives. This option
requires the -ini option and implies the -ltx option. See
pdftex(1).
-prof Enable profiling as soon as TeX enters the main loop. If tis
option it not used, profiling needs to switched on using the
\profileon primitive. Profiling can be switched of with the
\profileoff primitive.
-progname name
Pretend to be program name. This affects both the format used
and the search paths.
-version
Print version information and exit.
ENVIRONMENT
See the Kpathsea library documentation (e.g., the `Path specifications'
node) for precise details of how the environment variables are used.
The kpsewhich utility can be used to query the values of the variables.
TEXMFOUTPUT
Normally, TeX puts its output files in the current directory.
If any output file cannot be opened there, it tries to open it
in the directory specified in the environment variable
TEXMFOUTPUT. There is no default value for that variable. For
example, if you say texprof paper and the current directory is
not writable and TEXMFOUTPUT has the value /tmp, TeX attempts to
create /tmp/paper.log , /tmp/paper.dvi , and /tmp/paper.tprof .
TEXMFOUTPUT is also checked for input files, as TeX often
generates files that need to be subsequently read; for input, no
suffixes (such as ``.tex'') are added by default, the input name
is simply checked as given.
TEXINPUTS
Search path for \input and \openin files. This normally starts
with ``.'', so that user files are found before system files.
An empty path component will be replaced with the paths defined
in the texmf.cnf file. For example, set TEXINPUTS to
".:/home/user/tex:" to prepend the current directory and
``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path.
TEXFORMATS
Search path for format files.
TFMFONTS
Search path for font metric (.tfm) files.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
If set, its value, taken to be in epoch-seconds, will be used
for the creation date and as the reference moment for the time
related primitives of LaTeX. This is useful for making
reproducible builds.
FORCE_SOURCE_DATE
If set to the value "1", the time-related TeX primitives (\year,
\month, \day, \time) are also initialized from the value of
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH. This is not recommended if there is any
viable alternative.
Many, many more environment variables may be consulted related to path
searching. See the Kpathsea manual.
FILES
The location of the files mentioned below varies from system to system.
Use the kpsewhich utility to find their locations.
*.tfm Metric files for TeX's fonts.
*.fmt Predigested TeX format files.
*.pk *.pfb
Font files used by TeX.
NOTES
This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete
documentation for the TeX profiler can be found in texprof.pdf.
Further information can be found in the manual of the Kpathsea
library.
BUGS
This version of the TeX profiler does not implement all of the
primitives that pdftex provides, and further, it will not produce the
same side effects.
AVAILABILITY
The TeX profiler should compile on a large variety of machine
architectures and operating systems. The function to obtain timing
information id POSIX specific.
The sources of the TeX profiler are hosted at
https://github.com/ruckertm/HINT
SEE ALSO
texprofiler(1), tex(1), latex(1), pdftex(1), pdflatex(1),and
kpsewhich(1).
AUTHORS
The primary author of the TeX profiler is Martin Ruckert, with eTeX
extensions by Peter Breitenlohner, LaTeX extensions by Thierry Laronde,
and the kpathsearch library by Karl Berry.
TeX was designed by Donald E. Knuth, who implemented it using his Web
system for Pascal programs.
Many, many more contributed to the typesetting system now known as TeX;
far too many to name all of them here.
Version 1.0 2 September 2024 texprof(1)
texlive-bin 2025.74524 - Generated Thu Mar 13 08:27:40 CDT 2025