Fixpoint computation for polyvariant static analyses of higher-order applicative programs

Abstract

This paper presents an optimized general-purpose algorithm for polyvariant, static analyses of higher-order applicative programs. A polyvariant analysis is a very accurate form of analysis that produces many more abstract descriptions for a program than does a conventional analysis. It may also compute intermediate abstract descriptions that are irrelevant to the final result of the analysis. The optimized algorithm addresses this overhead while preserving the accuracy of the analysis. The algorithm is also parameterized over both the abstract domain and degree of polyvariance. We have implemented an instance of our algorithm and evaluated its performance compared to the unoptimized algorithm. Our implementation runs significantly faster on average than the other algorithm for benchmarks reported here.