Binding-Time Analysis and the Taming of C Pointers

The aim of binding-time analysis is to determine when variables, expressions, statements, etc. in a program can be evaluated by classifying these into static (compile-time) and dyamic (run-time). Explicit separation of binding times has turned out to be crucial for successful self-application of partial evaluators, and apparently, it is also an important stepping-stone for profitable specialization of imperative languages with pointers and dynamic memory allocation. In this paper we present an automatic binding-time analysis for a substantial subset of the C language. The paper has two parts. In the first part, the semantic issues of binding-time separation is discussed with emphasis on pointers and classification of these. This leads to the introduction of a two-level C language where binding times are explicit in the syntax. Finally, well-annotatedness rules are given which excludes non-consistently annotated programs. In the second part, an automatic binding-time analysis based ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1993
• Where: PEPM
• Authors: Lars Ole Andersen
• Keywords: Automatic Binding-time Analysis, Binding Times, Binding-time Analysis, PEPM 1993, Software Engineering