Some experience with DAVE: a Fortran program analyzer

This paper describes DAVE, an automatic program testing aid which performs a static analysis of Fortran programs. DAVE analyzes the data flows both within and across subprogram boundaries of Fortran programs, and is able to detect occurrences of uninitialized and dead variables in such programs. The paper shows how this capability facilitates the detection of a wide variety of errors, many of which are often quite subtle. The central analytic mechanism in DAVE is a depth-first search procedure which enables DAVE to execute efficiently. Some experiences with DAVE are described and evaluated and some future work is projected.