Region-Based Selective Flow-Sensitive Pointer Analysis

We introduce a new region-based SELective Flow-Sensitive (Selfs) approach to inter-procedural pointer analysis for C that operates on the regions partitioned from a program. Flow-sensitivity is maintained between the regions but not inside, making traditional flow-insensitive and flow-sensitive as well as recent sparse flow-sensitive analyses all special instances of our Selfs framework. By separating region partitioning as an independent concern from the rest of the pointer analysis, Selfs facilitates the development of flow-sensitive variations with desired efficiency and precision tradeoffs by reusing existing pointer resolution algorithms. We also introduce a new unification-based approach for region partitioning to demonstrate the generality and flexibility of our Selfs framework, as evaluated using SPEC2000/2006 benchmarks in LLVM.