Resolving and applying constraint queries on context-sensitive analyses

A context-sensitive analysis is an analysis in which program elements are assigned sets of properties that depend upon the context in which they occur. For analyses on imperative languages, this often refers to considering the behavior of statements in a called procedure with respect to the call-stack that generated the procedure invocation. Algorithms for performing or approximating these types of analyses make up the core of interprocedural program analysis and are pervasive, having applications in program comprehension, optimization, and verification. However, for many of these applications what is of interest is the solution to the dual problem: given a vertex and a desirable set of properties, what is the set of potential stack-contexts leading to that vertex that results in the desirable property set? Many techniques, such as procedure cloning, have been developed to approximately partition the set of stack-contexts leading to a vertex according to such a condition. This paper ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: PASTE
• Authors: James Ezick
• Keywords: Desirable Property, Dual Problem, PASTE 2004, Program Comprehension