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Dependence analysis for pointer variables

Authors:

T. RepsAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '89: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1989 conference on Programming language design and implementation

Pages 28 - 40

https://doi.org/10.1145/73141.74821

Published: 21 June 1989 Publication History

Abstract

Our concern is how to determine data dependencies between program constructs in programming languages with pointer variables. We are particularly interested in computing data dependencies for languages that manipulate heap-allocated storage, such as Lisp and Pascal. We have defined a family of algorithms that compute safe approximations to the flow, output, and anti-dependencies of a program written in such a language. Our algorithms account for destructive updates to fields of a structure and thus are not limited to the cases where all structures are trees or acyclic graphs; they are applicable to programs that build cyclic structures.

Our technique extends an analysis method described by Jones and Muchnick that determines an approximation to the actual layouts of memory that can arise at each program point during execution. We extend the domain used in their abstract interpretation so that the (abstract) memory locations are labeled by the program points that set their contents. Data dependencies are then determined from these memory layouts according to the component labels found along the access paths that must be traversed during execution to evaluate the program's statements and predicates.

For structured programming constructs, the technique can be extended to distinguish between loop-carried and loop-independent dependencies, as well as to determine lower bounds on minimum distances for loop-carried dependencies.

References

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Hu YWang WHunger CWood RKhurshid STiwari MSpinellis DGousios GChechik MDi Penta M(2021)ACHyb: a hybrid analysis approach to detect kernel access control vulnerabilitiesProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468627(316-327)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
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Index Terms

Dependence analysis for pointer variables
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development process management
      1. Software development methods
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Formal language definitions
      1. Semantics
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program constructs
    2. Program semantics

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '89: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1989 conference on Programming language design and implementation

June 1989

355 pages

ISBN:089791306X

DOI:10.1145/73141

Editor:
R. L. Wexelblat
ACM Headquarters, New York, NY

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 24, Issue 7
Proceedings of the SIGPLAN '89 symposium on Interpreters and interpretive techniques
July 1989
355 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/74818
Editor:
Richard Wexelblat
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 1989 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

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Published: 21 June 1989

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PLDI89: Programming Language Design & Implementation

June 19 - 23, 1989

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3524059.3532393
Hu YWang WHunger CWood RKhurshid STiwari MSpinellis DGousios GChechik MDi Penta M(2021)ACHyb: a hybrid analysis approach to detect kernel access control vulnerabilitiesProceedings of the 29th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3468264.3468627(316-327)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3468264.3468627
Botinčan MDodds MJagannathan S(2013)Proof-Directed Parallelization Synthesis by Separation LogicACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/2491522.249152535:2(1-60)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2491522.2491525
Sarkar SMitra SSrinivasan A(2012)Reuse and Refactoring of GPU Kernels to Design Complex ApplicationsProceedings of the 2012 IEEE 10th International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications10.1109/ISPA.2012.26(134-141)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2012
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Pingali KNguyen DKulkarni MBurtscher MHassaan MKaleem RLee TLenharth AManevich RMéndez-Lojo MPrountzos DSui XHall MPadua D(2011)The tao of parallelism in algorithmsProceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/1993498.1993501(12-25)Online publication date: 4-Jun-2011
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Litvak SDor NBodik RRinetzky NSagiv MRoman Gvan der Hoek A(2010)Field-sensitive program dependence analysisProceedings of the eighteenth ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering10.1145/1882291.1882334(287-296)Online publication date: 7-Nov-2010
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