[Bug gcov-profile/95348] GCC records zero functions and modules in the profiling data file, ICC does NOT

[qinzhao at gcc dot gnu.org]

https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=95348

--- Comment #24 from qinzhao at gcc dot gnu.org ---
with the patch added to gcc11, I tested it with the small testing case, and got
the following data:

******without the patch:
qinzhao@gcc14:~/Bugs/profile/small_gcc/gcc_prof_dir/13248$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 qinzhao qinzhao 100 Jun  2 19:02
#home#qinzhao#Bugs#profile#small_gcc#five.gcda
-rw-r--r-- 1 qinzhao qinzhao 184 Jun  2 19:02
#home#qinzhao#Bugs#profile#small_gcc#lib.gcda
-rw-r--r-- 1 qinzhao qinzhao 100 Jun  2 19:02
#home#qinzhao#Bugs#profile#small_gcc#ten.gcda

******with the patch:
qinzhao@gcc14:~/Bugs/profile/small_gcc/gcc_prof_dir/20668$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 qinzhao qinzhao  68 Jun  2 19:34
#home#qinzhao#Bugs#profile#small_gcc#five.gcda
-rw-r--r-- 1 qinzhao qinzhao 144 Jun  2 19:34
#home#qinzhao#Bugs#profile#small_gcc#lib.gcda
-rw-r--r-- 1 qinzhao qinzhao 100 Jun  2 19:34
#home#qinzhao#Bugs#profile#small_gcc#ten.gcda

from the above data, we can see:

1. there are size reduction for "five.c" and "lib.c" as expected.
2. However, we still keep the *.gcda file for five.c even though there is no
any meaningful data in this file. 

I will try to get more data on our real application. 

one question: why not just delete the entire records whose counter is zero and
delete the entire file whose counter is zero?