NDLI: Practical memory leak detection using guarded value-flow analysis

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Cherem, Sigmund Princehouse, Lonnie Rugina, Radu
Abstract	This paper presents a practical inter-procedural analysis algorithm for detecting memory leaks in C programs. Our algorithm tracks the flow of values from allocation points to deallocation points using a sparse representation of the program consisting of a value flow graph that captures def-use relations and value flows via program assignments. Edges in the graph are annotated with guards that describe branch conditions in the program. The memory leak analysis is reduced to a reachability problem over the guarded value flowgraph. Our implemented tool has been effective at detecting more than 60 memory leaks in the SPEC2000 benchmarks and in two open-source applications, bash and sshd, while keeping the false positive rate below 20%. The sparse program representation makes the tool efficient in practice, and allows it to report concise error messages.
Starting Page	480
Ending Page	491
Page Count	12
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03621340 15581160
DOI	10.1145/1273442.1250789
Journal	ACM SIGPLAN Notices (SIGP)
Volume Number	42
Issue Number	6
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1983-05-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Value-flow analysis Memory management Static error detection Memory leaks
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design Software

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Practical memory leak detection using guarded value-flow analysis