Complementation in Abstract Interpretation

By: A. Cortesi, G. File', R. Giacobazzi, C. Palamidessi and F. Ranzato

Roberto Giacobazzi
Dip. di Informatica
Univ. di Pisa
Corso Italia 40, 56125 Pisa (Italy)
giaco@di.unipi.it

Abstract:

Reduced product of abstract domains is a rather well-known operation for domain composition in abstract interpretation. In this article, we study its inverse operation, introducing a notion of domain complementation in abstract interpretation (see here for the corresponding result in Lattice Theory). Complementation provides a systematic way to design new abstract domains, and it allows to systematically decompose domains. Also, such an operation allows to simplify domain verification problems, and it yields space-saving representations for complex domains. We show that the complement exists in most cases, and we apply complementation to three well-known abstract domains, notably to Cousot and Cousot's interval domain for integer variable analysis, to Cousot and Cousot's domain for comportment analysis of functional languages, and to the domain Sharing for aliasing analysis of logic languages. This paper is an extended version of Complementation in Abstract Interpretation (LNCS Vol. 983, Springer-Verlag, 1995).