profile (redirected from cost-benefit profile)

profile

1. a view or representation of an object, esp a building, in contour or outline

2. a vertical section of soil from the ground surface to the parent rock showing the different horizons

3. 

a. a vertical section of part of the earth's crust showing the layers of rock

b. a representation of such a section

4. the outline of the shape of a river valley either from source to mouth (long profile) or at right angles to the flow of the river (cross profile)

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1.		PROFILE - Simple language for matching and scoring data. "User's Manual for the PROFILE System", Cambridge Computer Assoc (May 1974).
2.		profile - A control file for a program, especially a text file automatically read from each user's home directory and intended to be easily modified by the user in order to customise the program's behaviour. Used to avoid hard-coded choices (see also dot file, rc file).
3.		profile - A report on the amounts of time spent in each routine of a program, used to find and tune away the hot spots in it. This sense is often verbed. Some profiling modes report units other than time (such as call counts) and/or report at granularities other than per-routine, but the idea is similar.