Contextual def-use associations for object aggregation
Amie L. Souter, Lori Pollock · 2001
This paper presents a novel formulation of definitions, uses, and def-use associations for objects in object-oriented programs by exploiting the relations that occur between classes and their instantiated objects due to aggregation. Contextual def-use associations are computed by generating a partial call sequence for each def and use based on object aggregation relations. By extending an escape points-to graph representation of the program, we have developed and implemented three strategies for achieving different levels of context for contextual def-use associations. Our experiments reveal that with all three strategies, multiple unique contextual def-use associations related to the same traditional (context-free) association are often generated. Contextual def-use associations are particularly useful for increasing test coverage and focusing the testing on critical method invocation sequences of object-oriented programs.