Context-sensitive points-to analysis is valuable for achieving high precision with good performance. The standard flavors of contextsensitivity are call-site-sensitivity (kCFA) and object-sensitivity. Combining both flavors of context-sensitivity increases precision but at an infeasibly high cost. We show that a selective combination of call-site-and object-sensitivity for Java points-to analysis is highly profitable. Namely, by keeping a combined context only when analyzing selected language features, we can closely approximate the precision of an analysis that keeps both contexts at all times. In terms of speed, the selective combination of both kinds of context not only vastly outperforms non-selective combinations but is also faster than a mere object-sensitive analysis. This result holds for a large array of analyses (e.g., 1-object-sensitive, 2-object-sensitive with a context-sensitive heap, type-sensitive) establishing a new set of performance/precision sweet spots.
We present set-based pre-analysis: a virtually universal optimization technique for flow-insensitive points-to analysis. Points-to analysis computes a static abstraction of how object values flow through a program's variables. Set-based pre-analysis relies on the observation that much of this reasoning can take place at the set level rather than the value level. Computing constraints at the set level results in significant optimization opportunities: we can rewrite the input program into a simplified form with the same essential points-to properties. This rewrite results in removing both local variables and instructions, thus simplifying the subsequent value-based points-to computation. Effectively, setbased pre-analysis puts the program in a normal form optimized for points-to analysis.Compared to other techniques for off-line optimization of points-to analyses in the literature, the new elements of our approach are the ability to eliminate statements, and not just variables, as well as its modularity: set-based pre-analysis can be performed on the input just once, e.g., allowing the pre-optimization of libraries that are subsequently reused many times and for different analyses. In experiments with Java programs, set-based pre-analysis eliminates 30% of the program's local variables and 30% or more of computed context-sensitive points-to facts, over a wide set of benchmarks and analyses, resulting in a ∼20% average speedup (max: 110%, median: 18%).
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