Perspectives on Program Analysis-英文文献.pdfVIP

Perspectives on Program Analysis Flemming Nielson Computer Science Department, Aarhus University, Denmark To guide the research efforts in the area of program analysis it is necessary to provide a taxonomy of the various approaches (identifying strengths and weaknesses), and to explore the links to programming languages and theoretical computer science. In the past program analysis was mainly a tool for the compiler writer, but in the future it shows promise of being an important ingredient in ensuring the acceptable behaviour of software components roaming around on information networks. To guide the research efforts it is necessary with an appraisal of the current technology and to investigate its links to programming languages and theoretical computer science. Taxonomy The flow based approach [4; 8] to program analysis includes the traditional data flow analysis techniques as well as the more recent control flow analysis techniques. In this approach the focus is on discovering intensional properties like use-definition chaining (associating uses of variables with the corresponding assignments or “def- initions”) and closure analysis (associating function applications with the corre- sponding labels of the functions applied). This allows to discover aspects of the extensional properties: constant propagation (determining that a variable is always a constant at a given use), and neededness analysis (whether or not a function ac- tually uses its argument). On the positive side, this approach often gives rise to a rather efficient implementation; often it is performed by generating constraints that can then be solved efficiently, without being influenced by the syntax of the program being analysed. On the negative side, the semantic correctness of the analysis is seldom established and therefore ther