Documentation of output format

Author: FeuermurmelCreated Jul 4, 2025Updated Jul 4, 2025

I'm trying to figure out how to read the output of pyinstrument. I looked at the User guide, How it worksThe readme and searched the issue tracker here but could not find any documentation on it.

I ran pyinstrument ./manage.py print_config (the exact command is not important) and I'm seeing the following output:

Image

Questions that come to my mind:

  • What dies the blue background on function names (and <module>) mean?

  • What do the colors of the numbers at the start of each row mean?

    I guess they depend on the bucket that the number lies in, but how are these buckets determined? Is it powers of 2? Is it arbitrary? Can it be influenced?

  • What does [14 frames hidden] mean? Why are the frames hidden?

    I know I can use e.g. --show-all to show all frames, but what are the rules used by default to hide frames?

I think some for of documentation should be added that answers these questions