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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Lee, Jay
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04316
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author Lee, Jay
author_facet Lee, Jay
contents It is well-known that abstract interpreters can be systematically derived from their concrete counterparts using a "recipe," but developing sound static analyzers remains a time-consuming task. Reducing the effort required and mechanizing the process of developing analyzers continues to be a significant challenge. Is it possible to automatically retarget an existing abstract interpreter for a new language? We propose a novel technique to automatically derive abstract interpreters for various languages from an existing abstract interpreter. By leveraging partial evaluation, we specialize an abstract interpreter for a source language. The specialization is performed using the semantics of target languages written in the source language. Our approach eliminates the need to develop analyzers for new targets from scratch. We show that our method can effectively retarget an abstract interpreter for one language into a correct analyzer for another language.
format Preprint
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institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Retargeting an Abstract Interpreter for a New Language by Partial Evaluation
Lee, Jay
Programming Languages
It is well-known that abstract interpreters can be systematically derived from their concrete counterparts using a "recipe," but developing sound static analyzers remains a time-consuming task. Reducing the effort required and mechanizing the process of developing analyzers continues to be a significant challenge. Is it possible to automatically retarget an existing abstract interpreter for a new language? We propose a novel technique to automatically derive abstract interpreters for various languages from an existing abstract interpreter. By leveraging partial evaluation, we specialize an abstract interpreter for a source language. The specialization is performed using the semantics of target languages written in the source language. Our approach eliminates the need to develop analyzers for new targets from scratch. We show that our method can effectively retarget an abstract interpreter for one language into a correct analyzer for another language.
title Retargeting an Abstract Interpreter for a New Language by Partial Evaluation
topic Programming Languages
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.04316