Comment by aw1621107
4 days ago
> lifetime analysis can be done fully automatic for most C code as long as it can be done independently from other program state
Is this an interprocedural or intraprocedural analysis?
> I have seen quite promising work on this.
Is this work public? I'm interested in seeing more!
It is interprocedural, but one obviously needs annotations for interfaces to libraries that are linked-in.
One example of a project wich goes in this direction is this work: https://www.sei.cmu.edu/projects/ai-powered-memory-safety-fo...
(I assume the AI is mostly marketing as it is not necessary)
Thanks for the link! That's an interesting approach indeed. If I'm reading the paper [0] correctly the concepts involved look pretty similar to what Rust uses. I think they turn the interprocedural analysis into an intraprocedural one as well by effectively deriving borrowing information from function implementations and attaching that to signatures for use by callers. It's a compatibility hazard, which is why Rust chose to not do the same, but in principle it makes it easier to derive more precise borrowing information.
[0]: https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3814943.3816182
They globally derive the borrowing information for all pointers in the whole program by classifying the role of each pointer. If there is a way to do this in a way that makes the program safe, this is computed automatically using a SAT solver.
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