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<H1><A NAME="SECTION0012100000000000000000">
10.1 Introduction to the profiler</A>
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<P>
A <i class=dfn>profiler</i> is a program that describes the run time performance
of a program, providing a variety of statistics.  This documentation
describes the profiler functionality provided in the modules
<tt class=module>profile</tt> and <tt class=module>pstats</tt>.  This profiler provides
<i class=dfn>deterministic profiling</i> of any Python programs.  It also
provides a series of report generation tools to allow users to rapidly
examine the results of a profile operation.
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