Flow Logic and Operational Semantics

Flow logic is a “fast prototyping” approach to program analysis that shows great promise of being able to deal with a wide variety of languages and calculi for computation. However, seemingly innocent choices in the flow logic as well as in the operational semantics may inhibit proving the analysis correct. Our main conclusion is that environment based semantics is more flexible than either substitution based semantics or semantics making use of structural congruences (like alpha-renaming).

[1]  Olin Shivers.  The semantics of Scheme control-flow analysis , 1991 .

[2]  Jens Palsberg,et al.  Closure analysis in constraint form , 1995, TOPL.

[3]  Flemming Nielson,et al.  Infinitary control flow analysis: a collecting semantics for closure analysis , 1997, POPL '97.

[4]  Neil D. Jones,et al.  What Not to Do When Writing an Interpreter for Specialisation , 1996, Dagstuhl Seminar on Partial Evaluation.

[5]  Patrick Cousot,et al.  Abstract interpretation: a unified lattice model for static analysis of programs by construction or approximation of fixpoints , 1977, POPL.

[6]  Flemming Nielson,et al.  Flow Logics for Constraint Based Analysis , 1998, CC.

[7]  Patrick Cousot,et al.  Inductive definitions, semantics and abstract interpretations , 1992, POPL '92.

[8]  Peter Sestoft,et al.  Analysis and efficient implementation of functional programs , 1991 .

[9]  Flemming Nielson,et al.  Systematic realisation of control flow analyses for CML , 1997, ICFP '97.

[10]  A. Tarski.  A LATTICE-THEORETICAL FIXPOINT THEOREM AND ITS APPLICATIONS , 1955 .

[11]  Flemming Nielson,et al.  Principles of Program Analysis , 1999, Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

[12]  Nevin Heintze,et al.  Set-based analysis of ML programs , 1994, LFP '94.

[13]  Matthias Felleisen,et al.  The semantics of future and its use in program optimization , 1995, POPL '95.

[14]  Olin Shivers,et al.  Control flow analysis in scheme , 1988, PLDI '88.

[15]  Henk Barendregt,et al.  The Lambda Calculus: Its Syntax and Semantics , 1985 .

[16]  Robin Milner,et al.  Communication and concurrency , 1989, PHI Series in computer science.

[17]  Olin Shivers,et al.  The semantics of Scheme control-flow analysis , 1991, PEPM '91.