Resolving and exploiting the k-CFA paradox: illuminating functional vs. object-oriented program analysis

Low-level program analysis is a fundamental problem, taking the shape of “flow analysis” in functional languages and “points-to” analysis in imperative and object-oriented languages. Despite the similarities, the vocabulary and results in the two communities remain largely distinct, with limited cross-understanding. One of the few links is Shivers’s k-CFA work, which has advanced the concept of “context-sensitive analysis” and is widely known in both communities. Recent results indicate that the relationship between the functional and object-oriented incarnations of k-CFA is not as well understood as thought. Van Horn and Mairson proved k-CFA for k ≥ 1 to be EXPTIME-complete; hence, no polynomial-time algorithm can exist. Yet, there are several polynomial-time formulations of context-sensitive points-to analyses in object-oriented languages. Thus, it seems that functional k-CFA may actually be a profoundly different analysis from object-oriented k-CFA. We resolve this...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: PLDI
• Authors: Matthew Might, Yannis Smaragdakis, David Van Horn
• Keywords: Low-level Program Analysis, Object-oriented Languages, PLDI 2010, Polynomial-time