Given the output of cProfile on an arbitrary python program, can one reconstruct the original source code?

Question

If I do something like

python -m cProfile -o profile.prof myprogram.py

Can one reconstruct the source code from have access to profile.prof?

No, all you get are the function call points. – Martijn Pieters Dec 16 '16 at 07:43 — Martijn Pieters, Dec 16 '16 at 07:43
That's what I figured, thanks. – John Allard Dec 16 '16 at 07:43 — John Allard, Dec 16 '16 at 07:43

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 16 '16 at 07:49

All the .prof file contains is a marshal serialisation of the very same stats you see when you don't use -o (and thus print the stats).

It's basically a dictionary keyed on function 'label', with per function call stats, aggregated. A function label is defined as:

def label(code):
    if isinstance(code, str):
        return ('~', 0, code)    # built-in functions ('~' sorts at the end)
    else:
        return (code.co_filename, code.co_firstlineno, code.co_name)

So only the filename, line number and function name are recorded, nothing else. You can't reconstruct a full program from this.

Given the output of cProfile on an arbitrary python program, can one reconstruct the original source code?

1 Answers1