Generic Combination of Heap and Value Analyses in Abstract Interpretation

Abstract interpretation has been widely applied to approximate data structures and (usually numerical) value information. One needs to combine them to effectively apply static analysis to real software. Nevertheless, they have been studied mainly as orthogonal problems so far. In this context, we introduce a generic framework that, given a heap and a value analysis, combines them, and we formally prove its soundness. The heap analysis approximates concrete locations with heap identifiers, that can be materialized or merged. Meanwhile, the value analysis tracks information both on variable and heap identifiers, taking into account when heap identifiers are merged or materialized. We show how existing pointer and shape analyses, as well as numerical domains, can be plugged in our framework. As far as we know, this is the first sound generic automatic framework combining heap and value analyses that allows to freely manage heap identifiers.