Interprocedural program analysis for modern object-oriented languages

程序分析是一种技术，用于证明程序在执行时可能的行为的性质。它用于软件开发工具，如编译器、验证和测试工具以及程序可视化工具。当应用于面向对象的程序时，程序分析是具有挑战性的，因为这些程序被分成许多小的方法。程序的总体行为很难从单独的方法中预测出来，因为它依赖于所有方法的集合。许多现有的程序分析，在理论上是已知的，依赖于所有方法（整个程序）都可用于分析的假设，这通常是不切实际的。所建议的研究的目标是设计出本质上不存在这种假设的程序分析，以便它们可以在实际的编程工具中使用。拟议的研究将使许多在理论环境中被发现有效的分析技术能够转移到主流编程工具中，从而提高这些工具的有效性。所提出的研究结果将对其他研究人员和软件开发人员都很有用。基础程序分析将使研究人员能够研究程序间分析的新应用。它们还将使商业编程工具制造商（例如，IBM Toronto）能够制造更好的工具，这将提高使用这些工具的所有软件开发人员的生产力。

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.