An Abstract Domain Combinator for Separately Conjoining Memory Abstractions

The breadth and depth of heap properties that can be inferred by the union of today’s shape analyses is quite astounding. Yet, achieving scalability while supporting a wide range of complex data structures in a generic way remains a long-standing challenge. In this paper, we propose a way to side-step this issue by defining a generic abstract domain combinator for combining memory abstractions on disjoint regions. In essence, our abstract domain construction is to the separating conjunction in separation logic as the reduced product construction is to classical, non-separating conjunction. This approach eases the design of the analysis as memory abstract domains can be re-used by applying our separating conjunction domain combinator. And more importantly, this combinator enables an analysis designer to easily create a combined domain that applies computationally-expensive abstract domains only where it is required.