Context-sensitive data-dependence analysis via linear conjunctive language reachability

Abstract

Many program analysis problems can be formulated as graph reachability problems. In the literature, context-free language (CFL) reachability has been the most popular formulation and can be computed in subcubic time. The context-sensitive data-dependence analysis is a fundamental abstraction that can express a broad range of program analysis problems. It essentially describes an interleaved matched-parenthesis language reachability problem. The language is not context-free, and the problem is well-known to be undecidable. In practice, many program analyses adopt CFL-reachability to exactly model the matched parentheses for either context-sensitivity or structure-transmitted data-dependence, but not both. Thus, the CFL-reachability formulation for context-sensitive data-dependence analysis is inherently an approximation.