Experimental evaluation of optimal abstract operators for sharing and linearity analysis

Abstract

In the field of static analysis of logic programs, the optimality of abstract operators is a valuable theoretical property, as it provides insight into the structure of abstract domains and the maximum precision that can be achieved. However, implementing optimal operators is often complex and may significantly impact performance, giving rise to a trade-off between precision and efficiency. We experimentally investigate this trade-off in the context of sharing and linearity analysis of logic programs. Our experiments build on previous work that proposed several optimal operators for unification and matching. We have implemented these abstract operators and the corresponding abstract domains within the PLAI analyzer, part of the CiaoPP preprocessor, and we report the impact of increasing operator precision on the accuracy and performance of the overall analysis.