the detection of anomalous interprocedural data flow
In an earlier paper, the authors have defined type 1 and type 2 data flow anomalies to be, respectively, the reference to an undefined variable and the definition of a variable without subsequent reference. It is not difficult to devise search techniques to detect such anomalies when the anomalous data flow is contained in a single procedure. When the data flow crosses procedure boundaries, however, many difficulties may arise. In this paper, we carefully define the conditions under which interprocedural anomalies occur. We also show how algorithms currently used in global program optimization can easily be adapted to yield highly efficient algorithms for the detection of such interprocedural anomalies.
automatic error detection data flow analysis software reliability