Precise flow-insensitive may-alias analysis is NP-hard

Abstract

Determining aliases is one of the foundamental static analysis problems, in part because the precision with which this problem is solved can affect the precision of other analyses such as live variables, available expressions, and constant propagation. Previous work has investigated the complexity of flow-sensitive alias analysis. In this article we show that precise flow- insensitive may-alias analysis is NP-hard given arbitrary levels of pointers and arbitrary pointer dereferencing.