Comparing flow and context sensitivity on the modification-side-effects problem

  • Authors:

  • Philip A. Stocks;Barbara G. Ryder;William A. Landi;Sean Zhang

  • Affiliations:

  • Dept of Computer Science, Hill Center, Busch Campus, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ;Dept of Computer Science, Hill Center, Busch Campus, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ;Siemens Corporate Research, 755 College Road East, Princeton, NJ;Dept of Computer Science, Hill Center, Busch Campus, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis
  • Year:
  • 1998

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Abstract

Precision and scalability are two desirable, yet often conflicting, features of data-flow analyses. This paper reports on a case study of the modification---ide-effects problem for C in the presence of pointers from the perspective of contrasting the flow and context sensitivity of the solution procedure with respect to precision and scalability. The results show that the cost of precision of flow- and context-sensitive analysis is not always prohibitive, and that the precision of flow- and context-insensitive analysis is substantially better than worst-case estimates and can be sufficient for certain applications. Program characteristics that affect the performance of data-flow analysis are identified.