Path-Sensitive Value-Flow Analysis

Abstract

When analyzing programs for value recomputation, one faces the problem of naming the value that flows between equivalent computations with different lexical names. This paper presents a data-flow analysis framework that overcomes this problem by synthesizing a name space tailored for tracing the values whose flow is of interest to a given data-flow problem. Furthermore, to exploit recomputation of a value with multiple, synonymous names, path-sensitive value numbering on the synthetic name space is developed. Optimizations that rely on value flow to detect redundant computations, such as partial redundancy elimination and constant propagation, become more powerful when phrased in our framework. The framework is built on a new program representation called Value Name Graph (VNG) which gains its power from integrating three orthogonal techniques: symbolic back-substitution, value numbering, and data-flow analysis. Our experiments with the implementation show that analysis on the VNG is p...