Fast and Precise Points-to Analysis

Many software engineering applications require points-to analysis. Client applications range from optimizing compilers to program development and testing environments to reverse-engineering tools. In this paper, we present a new context-sensitive approach to points-to analysis where calling contexts are distinguished by the points-to sets analyzed for their target expressions. Compared to other well-known context-sensitive techniques, it is faster - twice as fast as the call string approach and by an order of magnitude faster than the object-sensitive technique - and requires less memory. At the same time, it provides higher precision than the call string technique and is similar in precision to the object-sensitive technique. These statements are confirmed by experiments.