Semantic Solutions to Program Analysis Problems

Abstract: Problems in program analysis can be solved by developing novel program semantics and deriving abstractions conventionally. For over thirty years, higher-order program analysis has been sold as a hard problem. Its solutions have required ingenuity and complex models of approximation. We claim that this difficulty is due to premature focus on abstraction and propose a new approach that emphasizes semantics. Its simplicity enables new analyses that are beyond the current state of the art.