DETECTING UNEXPECTED DATA VALUES IN OPTIMIZED CODE
Max Copperman, Charles E. McDowell · 1990
Optimizing compilers produce code that impedes source-level debugging. After optimization, the correspondence between a program''s source code and object code is not straightforward. An important problem for a source-level debugger of optimized programs is to be able to determine when, because of optimizations, the value of a variable does not correspond to what the user expects. The paper describes a solution to this problem. The solution uses reaching sets to determine when the definitions of a variable that reach a breakpoint location in an optimized program are not the definitions that would have reached in the unoptimized program.