In computer science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

, program analysis is the process of automatically analysing the behavior of computer programs. Two main approaches in program analysis are static program analysis and dynamic program analysis

Dynamic program analysis

Dynamic program analysis is the analysis of computer software that is performed by executing programs built from that software system on a real or virtual processor. For dynamic program analysis to be effective, the target program must be executed with sufficient test inputs to produce interesting...

. Main applications of program analysis are program correctness and program optimization.

Techniques related to program analysis include:

• control-flow and data-flow analysis
  Data-flow analysis
  Data-flow analysis is a technique for gathering information about the possible set of values calculated at various points in a computer program. A program's control flow graph is used to determine those parts of a program to which a particular value assigned to a variable might propagate. The...
  
  
• constraint-based analysis
• abstract interpretation
  Abstract interpretation
  In computer science, abstract interpretation is a theory of sound approximation of the semantics of computer programs, based on monotonic functions over ordered sets, especially lattices. It can be viewed as a partial execution of a computer program which gains information about its semantics In...
  
  ,
• type
  Type system
  A type system associates a type with each computed value. By examining the flow of these values, a type system attempts to ensure or prove that no type errors can occur...
  
   and effect system
  Effect system
  An effect system is a formal system which describes the computational effects of computer programs, such as side effects. An effect system can be used to provide a compile-time checking of the possible effects of the program....
  
  s.

A technique that is applied for certain kinds of program analysis is program slicing.

Related fields include performance analysis

Performance analysis

In software engineering, profiling is a form of dynamic program analysis that measures, for example, the usage of memory, the usage of particular instructions, or frequency and duration of function calls...

 and program verification.

Further reading

• Flemming Nielson, Hanne Riis Nielson, Chris Hankin (2005). Principles of Program Analysis. Springer.