The role of linearity in sharing analysis

Sharing analysis is used to statically discover data structures which may overlap in object-oriented programs. Using the abstract interpretation framework, we show that sharing analysis greatly benefits from linearity information. A variable is linear in a program state when different field paths starting from it always reach different objects. We propose a graph-based abstract domain which can represent aliasing, linearity, and sharing information and define all the necessary abstract operators for the analysis of a Java-like language.