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<h4 class="subsection">5.2.2 Lines for a Function's Callers</h4>

<p>A function's entry has a line for each function it was called by. 
These lines' fields correspond to the fields of the primary line, but
their meanings are different because of the difference in context.

   <p>For reference, we repeat two lines from the entry for the function
<code>report</code>, the primary line and one caller-line preceding it, together
with the heading line that shows the names of the fields:

<pre class="smallexample">     index  % time    self  children called     name
     ...
                     0.00    0.05       1/1           main [2]
     [3]    100.0    0.00    0.05       1         report [3]
</pre>
   <p>Here are the meanings of the fields in the caller-line for <code>report</code>
called from <code>main</code>:

     <dl>
<dt><code>self</code><dd>An estimate of the amount of time spent in <code>report</code> itself when it was
called from <code>main</code>.

     <br><dt><code>children</code><dd>An estimate of the amount of time spent in subroutines of <code>report</code>
when <code>report</code> was called from <code>main</code>.

     <p>The sum of the <code>self</code> and <code>children</code> fields is an estimate
of the amount of time spent within calls to <code>report</code> from <code>main</code>.

     <br><dt><code>called</code><dd>Two numbers: the number of times <code>report</code> was called from <code>main</code>,
followed by the total number of non-recursive calls to <code>report</code> from
all its callers.

     <br><dt><code>name and index number</code><dd>The name of the caller of <code>report</code> to which this line applies,
followed by the caller's index number.

     <p>Not all functions have entries in the call graph; some
options to <code>gprof</code> request the omission of certain functions. 
When a caller has no entry of its own, it still has caller-lines
in the entries of the functions it calls.

     <p>If the caller is part of a recursion cycle, the cycle number is
printed between the name and the index number. 
</dl>

   <p>If the identity of the callers of a function cannot be determined, a
dummy caller-line is printed which has &lsquo;<samp><span class="samp">&lt;spontaneous&gt;</span></samp>&rsquo; as the
&ldquo;caller's name&rdquo; and all other fields blank.  This can happen for
signal handlers. 
<!-- What if some calls have determinable callers' names but not all? -->
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