Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding

Real world programs (in languages like C) heavily make use of pointers. Program understanding activities are thus made more difficult, since pointers affect the memory locations that are referenced in a statement, and also the functions called by a statement, when function pointers are used. The pro...

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Main Authors: Tonella Antoniol Fiutem, P. Tonella, G. Antoniol, R. Fiutem, E. Merlo
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: DRAFT 1997
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.6461
http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz
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spelling ftciteseerx:oai:CiteSeerX.psu:10.1.1.21.6461 2023-05-15T18:32:40+02:00 Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding Tonella Antoniol Fiutem P. Tonella G. Antoniol R. Fiutem E. Merlo The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives 1997 application/postscript http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.6461 http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz en eng DRAFT http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.6461 http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz Metadata may be used without restrictions as long as the oai identifier remains attached to it. http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz text 1997 ftciteseerx 2016-01-07T17:47:43Z Real world programs (in languages like C) heavily make use of pointers. Program understanding activities are thus made more difficult, since pointers affect the memory locations that are referenced in a statement, and also the functions called by a statement, when function pointers are used. The programmer needs to build a mental model of the memory use and of the pointers to its locations, in order to comprehend the functionalities of the system. This paper presents an efficient flow insensitive context insensitive points-to analysis algorithm capable of dealing with the features of the C code. It is extremely promising with regard to scalability, because of the low complexity. The results are valuable by themselves, as their graphical display represents the pointsto links between locations. They are also integrated with other program understanding techniques like, e.g., call graph construction, slicing, plan recognition and architectural recovery. 1 Text The Pointers Unknown
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description Real world programs (in languages like C) heavily make use of pointers. Program understanding activities are thus made more difficult, since pointers affect the memory locations that are referenced in a statement, and also the functions called by a statement, when function pointers are used. The programmer needs to build a mental model of the memory use and of the pointers to its locations, in order to comprehend the functionalities of the system. This paper presents an efficient flow insensitive context insensitive points-to analysis algorithm capable of dealing with the features of the C code. It is extremely promising with regard to scalability, because of the low complexity. The results are valuable by themselves, as their graphical display represents the pointsto links between locations. They are also integrated with other program understanding techniques like, e.g., call graph construction, slicing, plan recognition and architectural recovery. 1
author2 The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
format Text
author Tonella Antoniol Fiutem
P. Tonella
G. Antoniol
R. Fiutem
E. Merlo
spellingShingle Tonella Antoniol Fiutem
P. Tonella
G. Antoniol
R. Fiutem
E. Merlo
Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding
author_facet Tonella Antoniol Fiutem
P. Tonella
G. Antoniol
R. Fiutem
E. Merlo
author_sort Tonella Antoniol Fiutem
title Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding
title_short Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding
title_full Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding
title_fullStr Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding
title_full_unstemmed Points-to Analysis for Program Understanding
title_sort points-to analysis for program understanding
publisher DRAFT
publishDate 1997
url http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.6461
http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz
genre The Pointers
genre_facet The Pointers
op_source http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz
op_relation http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.21.6461
http://serg.ing.unisannio.it/~antoniol/papers/iwpc97.ps.gz
op_rights Metadata may be used without restrictions as long as the oai identifier remains attached to it.
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