Profile a python script using cProfile into an external file

Question

I am new to python programming.I have a python script and I am trying to profile it using cProfile command. I typed the following

python -m cProfile -o readings.txt my_script.py

It generated readings.txt. But when I try to open the file using any standard text editor or notepad, the file doesn't open properly. It doesn't contain the data

Can anyone please tell me how to store these statistics into an external file that can be opened using notepad??

I am using windows platform

Answer 1

The output file generated by the cProfile -o module isn't plaintext; it's a serialized pstats.Stats object. Rather than using the -o option, I generally just redirect stdout into the file I want to create.

python -m cProfile -s time my_script.py > profile.text 2>&1

Otherwise, you just need to use the pstats module to read the file and inspect its contents (see the documentation linked above).