The ant and the grasshopper: fast and accurate pointer analysis for millions of lines of code

Abstract

Pointer information is a prerequisite for most program analyses, and the quality of this information can greatly affect their precision and performance. Inclusion-based (i.e. Andersen-style) pointer analysis is an important point in the space of pointer analyses, offering a potential sweet-spot in the trade-off between precision and performance. However, current techniques for inclusion-based pointer analysis can have difficulties delivering on this potential.