Interprocedural program analysis for modern object-oriented languages

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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.