Tab-Delimited File Format
Feature Only in Professional and Enterprise Editions Profiling is supported only in Visual C++ Professional and Enterprise Editions. For more information, see .
Every piece of data stored by the profiler is available through the tab-delimited file. Because not all aspects of the database are recorded by every profiling method, unused fields within a record may be zero. For example, the total time of the program will be zero if the program is profiled for counts only. Also, all included functions are listed for function counting and timing profiles, even if those functions were not executed.
The tab-delimited format is arranged with one record per line and two to eight fields per record. The following figure shows how a database looks when it is loaded into Microsoft Excel. This database was produced using the PLIST /T command-line option.
Tab-Delimited File in Microsoft Excel
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The first item in each record is a format tag number. These tags range from 0 through 7 and indicate the kind of data given in the other fields of the record. The fields in each record are described in
Tab-delimited files are created with global information records first, organized in numerical order by format tag. The local information records, containing information about specific lines or functions, are created last. Local information records are organized by line number.
If the .PBT file contains information from more than one .EXE or .DLL file, the global information records will cover them all. Local information records include the Exe field, which specifies the name of the executable file that each record pertains to.