{"id":157552,"date":"2009-05-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/reference-count-analysis-with-shallow-aliasing\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T21:58:51","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T04:58:51","slug":"reference-count-analysis-with-shallow-aliasing","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/reference-count-analysis-with-shallow-aliasing\/","title":{"rendered":"Reference Count Analysis With Shallow Aliasing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Reference counting is a commonly used technique for resource management. One key correctness criterion in the use of reference counts is that increment and decrement operations must be well-matched. In this paper we consider the problem of statically verifying that a given (sequential) program uses reference counts correctly: that is, that the program performs an equal number of increment and decrement operations on every object. We present a polynomial time algorithm for verifying this property when the program is allowed to have only shallow pointers: that is, the program may contain pointers to reference count objects, but the program does not contain pointers to pointers. We show that the problem is intractable if general (non-shallow) pointers are allowed. Our polynomial time algorithm, for the case of shallow pointers, works by reducing the problem to that of an affine-relation analysis problem.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reference counting is a commonly used technique for resource management. One key correctness criterion in the use of reference counts is that increment and decrement operations must be well-matched. In this paper we consider the problem of statically verifying that a given (sequential) program uses reference counts correctly: that is, that the program performs an 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