Principles of Program Analysis

To guide the research efforts in the area of program analysis it is necessary to provide a taxonomy of the various approaches (identifying strengths and weaknesses), and to explore the links to programming languages and theoretical computer science. In the past program analysis was mainly a tool for the compiler writer, but in the future it shows promise of being an important ingredient in ensuring the acceptable behaviour of software components roaming around on information networks. To guide the research efforts it is necessary with an appraisal of the current technology and to investigate its links to programming languages and theoretical computer science. Taxonomy The flow based approach [4; 8] to program analysis includes the traditional data flow analysis techniques as well as the more recent control flow analysis techniques. In this approach the focus is on discovering intensional properties like use-definition chaining (associating uses of variables with the corresponding assignments or “def-initions”) and closure analysis (associating function applications with the corre