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A Relational Static Semantics for Call Graph Construction

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Formal Methods and Software Engineering (ICFEM 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11852))

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Abstract

The problem of resolving virtual method and interface calls in object-oriented languages has been a long standing challenge to the program analysis community. The complexities are due to various reasons, such as increased levels of class inheritance and polymorphism in large programs. In this paper, we propose a new approach called type flow analysis that represent propagation of type information between program variables by a group of relations without the help of a heap abstraction. We prove that regarding the precision on reachability of class information to a variable, our method produces results equivalent to that one can derive from a points-to analysis. Moreover, in practice, our method consumes lower time and space usage, as supported by the experiment result.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Sometimes we mix-use the terms type and class in this paper when it is clear from the context.

  2. 2.

    Note that VTA treats statement \(x{.}f = y\) as follows. For each class c that flows to x which defines field f, VTA assigns all types that flow to y also to c.f.

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Acknowledgment

We thank Bernhard Scholz for his guidance in our experiment regarding JVM configurations. We also thank anonymous reviewers of ICFEM 2019 for their helpful suggestions to improve the quality of the paper. However due to limited time left before the camera ready deadline we are unable to finish all suggested improvements.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China

    Xilong Zhuo & Chenyi Zhang

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  1. Xilong Zhuo
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  2. Chenyi Zhang
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Correspondence to Chenyi Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRIT/INPT - ENSEEIHT, Toulouse, France

    Yamine Ait-Ameur

  2. Teesside University, Middlesbrough, UK

    Shengchao Qin

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Zhuo, X., Zhang, C. (2019). A Relational Static Semantics for Call Graph Construction. In: Ait-Ameur, Y., Qin, S. (eds) Formal Methods and Software Engineering. ICFEM 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11852. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32409-4_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32409-4_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32408-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32409-4

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