Nonuniform Alias Analysis of Recursive Data Structures and Arrays

Abstract

In this paper we present an alias analysis which is able to infer position-dependent equality relationships between pointers in recursively defined data structures or arrays. Our work is based on a semantic model of the execution of a program in which every allocated object is identified by a timestamp which represents the state of the program at the instant of the object creation. We provide a simple numerical abstraction of timestamps which is accurate enough to distinguish between elements of arrays or list-like structures. We follow the methodology of Abstract Interpretation to derive a sound approximation of the program semantics from this abstraction. The computability of our analysis is then guaranteed by using an abstract numerical lattice to represent relations between timestamps.KeywordsNull PointerAbstract InterpretationAbstract DomainAbstract SemanticProgram SemanticThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.