Assessing the effects of flow-sensitivity on pointer alias analyses

Abstract

This paper describes an empirical comparison of four contextinsensitive pointer alias analysis algorithms that use varying degrees of flow-sensitivity: a flow-insensitive algorithm that tracks variables whose addresses were taken and stored; a flow-insensitive algorithm that computes a solution for each function; a variant of this algorithm that uses precomputed kill information; and a flow-sensitive algorithm. In addition to contrasting the precision and efficiency of these analyses, we describe implementation techniques and quantify their analysis-time speed-up. © 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.