Pruning, Pushdown Exception-Flow Analysis

Statically reasoning in the presence of exceptions and about the effects of exceptions is challenging: exception-flows are mutually determined by traditional control-flow and points-to analyses. We tackle the challenge of analyzing exception-flows from two angles. First, from the angle of pruning co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in2014 IEEE 14th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation pp. 265 - 274
Main Authors Liang, Shuying, Sun, Weibin, Might, Matthew, Keep, Andrew, Van Horn, David
Format Conference Proceeding
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.09.2014
Subjects
abstract garbage collection
Abstracts
Algorithm design and analysis
Concrete
Context
exception-flow analysis
Java
pushdown analysis
Resource management
Semantics
Static analysis
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Summary:Statically reasoning in the presence of exceptions and about the effects of exceptions is challenging: exception-flows are mutually determined by traditional control-flow and points-to analyses. We tackle the challenge of analyzing exception-flows from two angles. First, from the angle of pruning control-flows (both normal and exceptional), we derive a pushdown framework for an object-oriented language with full-featured exceptions. Unlike traditional analyses, it allows precise matching of throwers to catchers. Second, from the angle of pruning points-to information, we generalize abstract garbage collection to object-oriented programs and enhance it with liveness analysis. We then seamlessly weave the techniques into enhanced reach ability computation, yielding highly precise exception-flow analysis, without becoming intractable, even for large applications. We evaluate our pruned, pushdown exception-flow analysis, comparing it with an established analysis on large scale standard Java benchmarks. The results show that our analysis significantly improves analysis precision over traditional analysis within a reasonable analysis time.
DOI:10.1109/SCAM.2014.44