profr: a very nice convenience
In R, the Rprof function allows users to obtain process information by statistical profiling meaning that it collects call information over intervals of time. The profr package gives a convenient rapper over the Rprof function in R and returns information in a data frame and allows you to represent the call stack graphically.
Example
We would like to look at the call stack in the MackChainLadder function in the ChainLadder package:
# Load the packages
require(profr)
require(ChainLadder)
# Run the profiler
p <- profr(MackChainLadder(auto[[3]]), 0.005)
head(p)
level g_id t_id f start end n leaf time source
8 1 1 1 MackChainLadder 0.000 0.040 1 FALSE 0.040 ChainLadder
9 2 1 1 chainladder 0.000 0.020 1 FALSE 0.020 ChainLadder
10 2 2 1 predict.ChainLadder 0.020 0.035 1 FALSE 0.015 <NA>
11 2 3 1 Mack.S.E 0.035 0.040 1 FALSE 0.005 <NA>
12 3 1 1 lapply 0.000 0.020 1 FALSE 0.020 base
13 3 2 1 predict.TriangleModel 0.020 0.035 1 FALSE 0.015 <NA>
plot(p)
Be aware however that since it is a statistical profiler, you will get a different answer each time you run it on the same process and the granularity will also vary depending on the time interval you choose (it will vary anyway!).