Symbolic Procedure Summary Using Region-based Symbolic Three-valued Logic

Abstract

One of the bottlenecks in interprocedural analysis is the difficulty in handling complex parameters. This paper proposes a novel approach to solve this problem: symbolic procedure summary, which is constructed using regionbased symbolic three-valued logic (RSTVL). RSTVL is a memory model that can describe memory state of variables and all kinds of associations among them. Based on the result of intraprocedural analysis, we construct symbolic procedure summary described by RSTVL, and instantiate it at call site using the calling context. Our approach improves analysis precision as it achieves context-sensitive and fieldsensitive interprocedural analysis. We apply this approach in defect detection, and experimental results show that it can effectively reduce both false negatives and false positives of defect detecting, and improve test accuracy at the same time.