Evaluating the Effectiveness of Pointer Alias Analyses

This paper describes an empirical comparison of the effectiveness of six context-insensitive pointer analysis algorithms that use varying degrees of flow-sensitivity. Four of the algorithms are flow-insensitive, one is flow-sensitive, and another is flow-insensitive, but uses precomputed flow-sensitive information. The effectiveness of each analysis is quantified in terms of compile-time efficiency and precision. Efficiency is reported by measuring CPU time and memory consumption of each analysis. Precision is reported by measuring the computed solutions at the program points where a pointer is dereferenced. The results of this paper will help implementors determine which pointer analysis is appropriate for their application.