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A Foundation of Escape Analysis

Patricia M. Hill
School of Computing
The University of Leeds
Leeds LS2 9JT
England

Fausto Spoto
Dipartimento Scientifico e Tecnologico
Strada Le Grazie
15 Ca' Vignal
37134 Verona
Italy

Abstract:

Escape analysis of object-oriented languages allows us to stack allocate dynamically created objects and to reduce the overhead of synchronisation in Java-like languages. We formalise the escape property E, computed by an escape analysis, as an abstract interpretation of concrete states. We define the optimal abstract operations induced by E for a framework of analysis known as watchpoint semantics. The implementation of E inside that framework is a formally correct abstract semantics (analyser) for escape analysis. We claim that E is the basis for more refined and precise domains for escape analysis.

Keywords: Semantics, static analysis, abstract interpretation, debugging.