TsmartGP: A Tool for Finding Memory Defects with Pointer Analysis

Abstract

Precise pointer analysis is desired since it is a core technique to find memory defects. There are several dimensions of pointer analysis precision, flow sensitivity, context sensitivity, field sensitivity and path sensitivity. For static analysis tools utilizing pointer analysis, considering all dimensions is difficult because the trade-off between precision and efficiency should be balanced.This paper presents TsmartGP, a static analysis tool for finding memory defects in C programs with a precise and efficient pointer analysis. The pointer analysis algorithm is flow, context, field, and quasi path sensitive. Control flow automatons are the key structures for our analysis to be flow sensitive. Function summaries are applied to get context information and elements of aggregate structures are handled to improve precision. Path conditions are used to filter unreachable paths. For efficiency, a multi-entry mechanism is proposed. Utilizing the pointer analysis algorithm, we implement a checker in TsmartGP to find uninitialized pointer errors in 13 real-world applications. Cppcheck and Clang Static Analyzer are chosen for comparison. The experimental results show that TsmartGP can find more errors while its accuracy is also higher than Cppcheck and Clang Static Analyzer. The demo video is available at https://youtu.be/IQlshemk6OA.