Static Type Determination for C++

Static type determination involves compile time calculation of the type of object a pointer may point to at a particular program point during some execution. We show that the problem of precise interprocedural type determination is NP-hard in the presence of inheritance, virtual methods and pointers. We highlight the significance of type determination in improving code efficiency and precision of other static analyses. We present a safe, approximate algorithm for C++ programs with single level pointers, using the conditional analysis technique [LR91]. We discuss the generalization of our approach to analyze programs with multiple levels of pointer dereferencing.