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A constraint-weaving approach to points-to analysis for AspectJ

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Abstract

Points-to analysis is a static code analysis technique that establishes the relationships between variables of references and allocated objects. A number of points-to analysis algorithms have been proposed for procedural and object-oriented languages like C and Java, while few of them can be used for AspectJ as we know so far. One main reason is that AspectJ is an aspect-oriented language which implements the separation of crosscutting concerns by advices, pointcuts, and inter-type declarations, while a points-to analysis of AspectJ programs may be imprecise because any aspect woven into the base code may change the points-to relations in the program and thus a conservative analysis has to be taken in order to handle the aspects. In this paper, we propose a context-sensitive points-to analysis technique called AJPoints for AspectJ. Similar to the weaving mechanism for AspectJ, AJPoints obtains the constraints and templates on the points-to relations for the base code and the aspects, respectively, but weaves and solves them in an iterative manner in order to cross the boundary between the base code and the aspects. We have implemented AJPoints on abc AspectJ compiler and evaluated it by using twelve AspectJ benchmark programs. The experimental results show that our technique can achieve a high precision about points-to relations in AspectJ programs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering and School of Software, hanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Qiang Sun, Yuting Chen & Jianjun Zhao

  2. State Key Laboratory of Computer Science, Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Qiang Sun & Jianjun Zhao

Authors
  1. Qiang Sun
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  2. Yuting Chen
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  3. Jianjun Zhao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuting Chen.

Additional information

Qiang Sun received a BS degree in software engineering in 2004 and a MS degree in computer science in 2009 from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is now a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong Unviersity. Qiang Sun’s research interests include program analysis and testing, and aspect-oriented software engineering.

Yuting Chen received a BS and a MS degrees in computer science from Nanjing University, China in 2000 and 2003, respectively. He received a PhD degree in computer science from Hosei University, Japan in 2007. He joined the School of Software at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2008. Yuting Chen’s research interests include program analysis and testing, and software verification and validation.

Jianjun Zhao received a BE degree in computer science from Tsinghua University, China in 1987, and a PhD degree in computer science from Kyushu University, Japan in 1997. He was an assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Fukuoka Institute of Technology, Japan from 1997 to 2000, and an associate professor from 2000 to 2005. He also worked as a visiting scientist at the Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2002 to 2003. Since 2005, he has been a full professor at the School of Software, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. His primary research interest is program analysis, software testing, model checking, and formal specification and verification techniques.

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Sun, Q., Chen, Y. & Zhao, J. A constraint-weaving approach to points-to analysis for AspectJ. Front. Comput. Sci. 8, 52–68 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-013-3106-2

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