Pointer 100107093104-phpapp01
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This paper presents a tunable pointer analysis framework for handling structures in the presence of type casting. The framework produces algorithms with different levels of precision, portability, and efficiency. Experimental results show that distinguishing structure fields usually improves precision, while conservative approximations for casting have little effect on time, space or precision.
Pointer 100107093104-phpapp01
- 1. CITED BY 49 2010 1 8
- 2. Type casting allows a program to access an object as if it had a type different from its declared type. This complicates the design of a pointer-analysis algorithm that treats structure fields as separate objects; therefore, some previous pointer-analysis algorithms “collapse” a structure into a single variable. The disadvantage of this approach is that it can lead to very imprecise points-to information. Other algorithms treat each field as a separate object based on its offset and size. While this approach leads to more precise results, the results are not portable because the memory layout of structures is implementation dependent. This paper first describes the complications introduced by type casting, then presents a tunable pointer-analysis framework for handling structures in the presence of casting. Different instances of this framework produce algorithms with different levels of precision, portability, and efficiency. Experimental results from running our implementations of four instances of this framework show that (i) it is important to distinguish fields of structures in pointer analysis, but (ii) making conservative approximations when casting is involved usually does not cost much in terms of time, space, or the precision of the results. 2010 1 8
- 3. Collapse 2010 1 8
- 4. Contributions • identify the problems specific to structures and casting • a tunable framework for pointer analysis (flow sensitive) • To evaluate the relative efficacies of different approaches to handling structures in the presence of casting 2010 1 8
- 5. Average point-to set size Consequently, a points-to fact of the form s points-to a would be interpreted as “any field of s may point to any field of a “. 2010 1 8
- 6. Analysis-time 2010 1 8
- 7. Points-to edges 2010 1 8