What do the columns in the output of "matlab -timing" mean?

In an effort to speed up Matlab startup, I started Matlab with the command line option "-timing".

This shows a table with three columns, "total", "item", and "gap" – but I couldn't find any documentation what these three columns stand for?

Answer 1

[the cyclist]

The -timing switch is a formerly documented feature, that still exists but is now undocumented. (I learned that fact from this interesting Undocumented Matlab post from @Yair Altman's great blog.) See his comments there.

But, I believe the short version of the meaning of these terms is

• item -- time spent on this line's item during startup
• gap -- (unexplained) gap between this line's time and the previous item
• total -- total of all items (including gap) up to and including this line

[Carsten Allefeld]

Thanks! Unfortunately it's just guessing...

[the cyclist]

If you really need to know specifically, the last time this was a documented function was in R2009a (again, according to Yair). Although documentation archives are available, they don't go back that far. That page suggests contacting support if you need documentation for older releases, so I guess you could do that.