Binding-time analysis and strictness analysis by abstract interpretation

Abstract

Given a description of inputs and parameters in a program, a Binding-Time Analysis determines parts of a program which can be evaluated at compile-time. A Strictness Analysis determines parts of a program, whose early evaluation does not change the value of the result. In this paper, we present an analysis which subsumes both analyses for a first-order functional language. The analysis is formulated in terms of Abstract Interpretation based upon approximation of a fixpoint collecting semantics using Galois connections.