Static analysis of PostScript code

Authors:
R Nigel Horspool;Jan Vitek
Affiliations:
Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3P6;Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3P6
Venue:
Computer Languages
Year:
1993

Citing 3
Cited 0

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POPL '77 Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages
PostScript Language Reference Manual

PostScript Language Reference Manual

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Abstract

Stack-based languages, such as PostScript, present a major challenge to static analysis techniques because of their almost unlimited polymorphism. We introduce a regular expression notation that is used to represent allowed combinations of types on the stack at different points in a PostScript program. Our abstract interpretation algorithm may then be used to perform static type analysis. The analysis has applications in detecting probable errors in the PostScript code or, ultimately, in permitting full or partial compilation of portions of code.