An Empirical Analysis of Static Analysis Methods for Detection and Mitigation of Code Library Hallucinations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Miranda-Pena, Clarissa, Reeson, Andrew, Paris, Cécile, Poon, Josiah, Kummerfeld, Jonathan K.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2026
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author Miranda-Pena, Clarissa
Reeson, Andrew
Paris, Cécile
Poon, Josiah
Kummerfeld, Jonathan K.
author_facet Miranda-Pena, Clarissa
Reeson, Andrew
Paris, Cécile
Poon, Josiah
Kummerfeld, Jonathan K.
contents Despite extensive research, Large Language Models continue to hallucinate when generating code, particularly when using libraries. On NL-to-code benchmarks that require library use, we find that LLMs generate code that uses non-existent library features in 8.1-40% of responses. One intuitive approach for detection and mitigation of hallucinations is static analysis. In this paper, we analyse the potential of static analysis tools, both in terms of what they can solve and what they cannot. We find that static analysis tools can detect 16-70% of all errors, and 14-85% of library hallucinations, with performance varying by LLM and dataset. Through manual analysis, we identify cases a static method could not plausibly catch, which gives an upper bound on their potential from 48.5% to 77%. Overall, we show that static analysis methods are cheap method for addressing some forms of hallucination, and we quantify how far short of solving the problem they will always be.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_07755
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle An Empirical Analysis of Static Analysis Methods for Detection and Mitigation of Code Library Hallucinations
Miranda-Pena, Clarissa
Reeson, Andrew
Paris, Cécile
Poon, Josiah
Kummerfeld, Jonathan K.
Computation and Language
Software Engineering
Despite extensive research, Large Language Models continue to hallucinate when generating code, particularly when using libraries. On NL-to-code benchmarks that require library use, we find that LLMs generate code that uses non-existent library features in 8.1-40% of responses. One intuitive approach for detection and mitigation of hallucinations is static analysis. In this paper, we analyse the potential of static analysis tools, both in terms of what they can solve and what they cannot. We find that static analysis tools can detect 16-70% of all errors, and 14-85% of library hallucinations, with performance varying by LLM and dataset. Through manual analysis, we identify cases a static method could not plausibly catch, which gives an upper bound on their potential from 48.5% to 77%. Overall, we show that static analysis methods are cheap method for addressing some forms of hallucination, and we quantify how far short of solving the problem they will always be.
title An Empirical Analysis of Static Analysis Methods for Detection and Mitigation of Code Library Hallucinations
topic Computation and Language
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07755