Distinctness and sharing domains for static analysis of Java programs

Abstract

The application field of static analysis techniques for object-oriented programming is getting broader, ranging from compiler optimizations to security issues. This leads to the need of methodologies that support reusability not only at the code level but also at higher (semantic) levels, in order to minimize the effort of proving correctness of the analyses. Abstract interpretation may be the most appropriate approach in that respect. This paper is a contribution towards the design of a general framework for abstract interpretation of Java programs. We introduce two generic abstract domains that express type, structural, and sharing information about dynamically created objects. These generic domains can be instantiated to get specific analyses either for optimization or verification issues. The semantics of the domains are precisely defined by means of concretization functions based on mappings between concrete and abstract locations. The main abstract operations, i.e., upper bound and assignment, are discussed. An application of the domains to source-to-source program specialization is sketched to illustrate the effectiveness of the analysis. © Springer-Verlag 2001.