On the complexity analysis of static analyses

This paper investigates bottom-up logic programming as a formalism for expressing static analyses. The main technical contribution consists of two meta-complexity theorems which allow, in many cases, the asymptotic running time of a bottom-up logic program to be determined by inspection. It is well known that a datalog program runs in O(nk) time where k is the largest number of free variables in any single rule. The theorems given here are significantly more refined. A variety of algorithms given as bottom-up logic programs are analyzed as examples.

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