Control-flow Analysis of Functional Programs

Jan Midtgaard, ACM Computing Surveys, 2012

Abstract

We present a survey of control-flow analysis of functional programs, which has been the subject of extensive investigation throughout the past 30 years. Analyses of the control flow of functional programs have been formulated in multiple settings and have led to many different approximations, starting with the seminal works of Jones, Shivers, and Sestoft. In this paper, we survey control-flow analysis of functional programs by structuring the multitude of formulations and approximations and comparing them.

Revision history

This CFA survey started out as a chapter of my dissertation. Since then it has undergone several revisions:

Here's a free ACM link to download the official version.

Here's the latest unofficial version as pdf, © ACM, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Computing Surveys, 44(3), June 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2187671.2187672

Survey material

Here's a BibTeX entry for the survey itself: 

@Article{Midtgaard:CSur12,
  author = 	 "Jan Midtgaard",
  title = 	 "Control-flow analysis of functional programs",
  journal =      "{ACM} Computing Surveys"
  year = 	 2012,
  volume =       44,
  number =       3,
  pages =        {10:1--10:33},
  month =        Jun
}

Here's the BibTeX file containing the references from the survey.

I keep scanned electronic copies of some of the more rare papers cited above. Send me an email if you are missing a specific paper.

Post-survey material

Since the completion of the survey the following CFA papers have been published:

Send me an email if you are aware of other CFA papers.

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