Summary: Set Constraints: Results, Applications and
Future Directions
Alexander Aiken
Computer Science Division
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720­1776
aiken@cs.berkeley.edu
Abstract. Set constraints are a natural formalism for many problems
that arise in program analysis. This paper provides a brief introduction
to set constraints: what set constraints are, why they are interesting, the
current state of the art, open problems, applications and implementa­
tions.
1 Introduction
Set constraints are a natural formalism for describing relationships between sets
of terms of a free algebra. A set constraint has the form X ` Y , where X
and Y are set expressions. Examples of set expressions are 0 (the empty set),
ff (a set­valued variable), c(X; Y ) (a constructor application), and the union,
intersection, or complement of set expressions.
Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in program analysis algo­
rithms based on solving systems of set constraints, including analyses for func­

Source: Aiken, Alex - Department of Computer Science, Stanford University

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences