Applications of Synchronized Pushdown Systems

Abstract

A precise static data-flow analysis transforms the program into a context-sensitive and field-sensitive approximation of the program. It is challenging to design an analysis of this precision efficiently due to the fact that the analysis is undecidable per se. Synchronized pushdown systems (SPDS) present a highly precise approximation of context-sensitive and field-sensitive data-flow analysis. This chapter presents some data-flow analyses that SPDS can be used for. Further on, this chapter summarizes two other contributions of the thesis “Synchronized Pushdown System for Pointer and Data-Flow Analysis” called Boomerang and IDEal. Boomerang is a demand-driven pointer analysis that builds on top of SPDS and minimizes the highly computational effort of a whole-program pointer analysis by restricting the computation to the minimal program slice necessary for an individual query. IDEal is a generic and efficient framework for data-flow analyses, e.g., typestate analysis. IDEal resolves pointer relations automatically and efficiently by the help of Boomerang. This reduces the burden of implementing pointer relations into an analysis. Further on, IDEal performs strong updates, which makes the analysis sound and precise.