Interprocedural program analysis for modern object-oriented languages

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Program analysis is a technique for proving properties of the possible behaviour of programs when they are executed. It is used in software development tools such as compilers, verification and testing tools, and program visualization tools. When applied to object-oriented programs, program analysis is challenging because these programs are divided into many small methods. The overall behaviour of the program is difficult to predict from individual methods in isolation, because it depends on all of the methods collectively. Many existing program analyses that are known in theory depend on the often practically unrealistic assumption that all of the methods (the whole program) are available for analysis. The goal of the proposed research is to devise program analyses that are intrinsically free of this assumption, so that they can be used in practical programming tools. The proposed research will enable many analysis techniques that have been found effective in theoretical settings to be transferred to mainstream programming tools, thus improving the effectiveness of those tools. The outcomes of the proposed research will be useful both to other researchers and to software developers. The foundational program analyses will enable researchers to study new applications of interprocedural analysis. They will also enable commercial programming tool makers (e.g., IBM Toronto) to make better tools, which will improve the productivity of all software developers that use the tools.