Profiling is a technique used to measure and analyze the performance of a program. It helps identify areas of code that consume excessive time or resources and assists in optimizing and improving the code.

The main goal of profiling is to answer questions like:

• Which parts of the code are taking the most time to execute?
• How much memory is being used by different parts of the program?
• How many times are specific functions or methods being called?
• What are the hotspots or bottlenecks in the code that need optimization?

Profiling can provide valuable information such as:

• Execution time: It measures the time taken by each function or method in a program, allowing developers to identify areas where optimization efforts should be focused.
• Memory usage: It tracks the allocation and deallocation of memory, helping to identify memory leaks or inefficient memory usage patterns.
• Function call statistics: It records the number of times each function or method is called, helping to identify frequently used or rarely used code paths.

1. Xdebug profiler
2. xhprof