Writing the profile to a file

[ViralBShah]

We already allow Profile.print() to take an IO object. It would be very convenient if it could take a string representing the filename to write to, and save the profile to a file. Otherwise, one has to do:

f = open(filename, "w")
Profile.print(f)
close(f)

Instead, just doing this would be much more convenient, and user-friendly:

Profile.print(filename)

[StefanKarpinski]

I don't disagree but you can just do open(Profile.print, filename).

[ViralBShah]

Yeah that works - but it has to be open(Profile.print, filename, "w").

[StefanKarpinski]

Sure.

[ivarne]

So this is about adding:

function print{T<:Unsigned}(filename::AbstractString, data::Vector{T} = fetch(), lidict::Dict = getdict(data); kwargs...)
    open(filename) do io
        print(io, data, lidict; kwargs...)
    end
end

about here, and testing to see that I didn't make a typo?

[timholy]

Yes, these types of fixes are usually easier to just make than they are to file an issue about 😄.

[ivarne]

At least the code is clearer than the written description, but tests and docs are also required, so still work to do,

[ViralBShah]

I mainly filed it as a reminder for myself to get to it next week- but I was pretty sure it was a simple fix. Tests, docs etc. are usually why I try not to do things in a hurry...

[JeffBezanson]

I dislike having lots of functions that accept either an I/O stream or a file name. In the long run it's easier to keep things orthogonal, learn how to write to a file once, and use that everywhere, rather than looking up which options every function supports.

[mbauman]

For accepting a file name, eventually I'd love to try to implement the proposal in #7299 (comment) … probably as a package first. If that were implemented, you would say: save("profile.txt", Profile.fetch()) (.txt would just print the object when saved, and read it in as a string when loaded).