Precise Call Graphs for C Programs with Function Pointers

Abstract. The use of pointers presents serious problems for software productivity tools for software understanding, restructuring, and testing. Pointers enable indirect memory accesses through pointer dereferences, as well as indirect procedure calls (e.g., through function pointers in C). Such indirect accesses and calls can be disambiguated with pointer analysis. In this paper we evaluate the precision of one specific pointer analysis (the FA pointer analysis by Zhang et al.) for the purposes of call graph construction for C programs with function pointers. The analysis is incorporated in a production-strength code-browsing tool from Siemens Corporate Research in which the program call graph is used as a primary tool for code understanding. The FA pointer analysis uses an inexpensive, almost-linear, flow- and context-insensitive algorithm. To measure analysisprecision,wecomparethecallgraphconstructedbythisanalysiswiththemostprecisecallgraphobtainable by a large category of existing p...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2004
• Where: ASE
• Authors: Ana Milanova, Atanas Rountev, Barbara G. Ryder
• Keywords: ASE 2004, FA Pointer Analysis, Pointer Analysis, Pointers