Object-oriented programming relies on sharing and the mutable states of objects for common data structures, patterns and programming idioms. Sharing and mutable state is a powerful but dangerous combination. Uncontrolled aliasing risks causing representation exposure, where an object’s state is exposed and modifiable out of the control of its conceptually owning object. This breaks encapsulatio...

We propose a mechanism for alias control which is based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Specifically, we propose use of ownership and immutability constraints on UML associations and verification of these constraints through reverse engineering. These constraints inherently support software design principles, and impose requirements on the implementation that may help prevent serious pr...

We report our experiences with the implementation of InterProcedural Alias Analysis (IPA) for Fortran. Implicit aliasing caused by reference parameter passing can be uncovered in a program with multiple compilation units by interprocedural analysis. For scalar objects and for full arrays, the IPA processor described here finds all alias relations. For indexed array elements and partial arrays, ...

We present a high-level survey of state-of-the-art alias analyses for object-oriented programs, based on a years-long effort developing industrial-strength static analyses for Java. We first present common variants of points-to analysis, including a discussion of key implementation techniques. We then describe flow-sensitive techniques based on tracking of access paths, which can yield greater ...

Verifying Concurrent Programs by Controlling Alias Interference

When an expression refers to a memory location that is referred to by another expression, we say that there is an alias relation between those expressions. Alias analysis, i.e, the extraction of such relations is essential for efficient maintenance of object-oriented programs. Although many researchers have already proposed analysis methods and implemented prototype tools for object-oriented pr...

This paper presents a technique for dependence analysis on programs with pointers or dynamic recursive data structures. It differs from previously proposed approaches in analyzing structure access conflicts between traversal patterns before gathering alias and connection information. Conflict analysis is conducted under the assumption that each unique path leads to a distinct storage location, ...

This paper reports on the formalization and proof of soundness, using the Coq proof assistant, of an alias analysis: a static analysis that approximates the flow of pointer values. The alias analysis considered is of the points-to kind and is intraprocedural, flow-sensitive, field-sensitive, and untyped. Its soundness proof follows the general style of abstract interpretation. The analysis is d...