Value Partitioning: A Lightweight Approach to Relational Static Analysis for JavaScript

TY - GEN

T1 - Value Partitioning

T2 - 34th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2020)

AU - Nielsen, Benjamin Barslev

AU - Møller, Anders

N1 - Conference code: 34

PY - 2020/11

Y1 - 2020/11

N2 - In static analysis of modern JavaScript libraries, relational analysis at key locations is critical to provide sound and useful results. Prior work addresses this challenge by the use of various forms of trace partitioning and syntactic patterns, which is fragile and does not scale well, or by incorporating complex backwards analysis. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight variant of trace partitioning named value partitioning that refines individual abstract values instead of entire abstract states. We describe how this approach can effectively capture important relational properties involving dynamic property accesses, functions with free variables, and predicate functions. Furthermore, we extend an existing JavaScript analyzer with value partitioning and demonstrate experimentally that it is a simple, precise, and efficient alternative to the existing approaches for analyzing widely used JavaScript libraries.

AB - In static analysis of modern JavaScript libraries, relational analysis at key locations is critical to provide sound and useful results. Prior work addresses this challenge by the use of various forms of trace partitioning and syntactic patterns, which is fragile and does not scale well, or by incorporating complex backwards analysis. In this paper, we propose a new lightweight variant of trace partitioning named value partitioning that refines individual abstract values instead of entire abstract states. We describe how this approach can effectively capture important relational properties involving dynamic property accesses, functions with free variables, and predicate functions. Furthermore, we extend an existing JavaScript analyzer with value partitioning and demonstrate experimentally that it is a simple, precise, and efficient alternative to the existing approaches for analyzing widely used JavaScript libraries.

KW - Abstract interpretation

KW - Dataflow analysis

KW - JavaScript

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85115262217&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2020.16

DO - 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2020.16

M3 - Article in proceedings

T3 - Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics

BT - 34th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, ECOOP 2020

PB - Dagstuhl Publishing

Y2 - 15 November 2020 through 17 November 2020

ER -