Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Interconvertibility of a class of set constraints and context-free-language reachability*1
Available online 21 September 2000.
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Abstract
We show the interconvertibility of context-free-language reachability problems and a class of set-constraint problems: given a context-free-language reachability problem, we show how to construct a set-constraint problem whose answer gives a solution to the reachability problem; given a set-constraint problem, we show how to construct a context-free-language reachability problem whose answer gives a solution to the set-constraint problem. The interconvertibility of these two formalisms offers a conceptual advantage akin to the advantage gained from the interconvertibility of finite-state automata and regular expressions in formal language theory, namely, a problem can be formulated in whichever formalism is most natural. It also offers some insight into the “O(n3) bottleneck” for different types of program-analysis problems and allows results previously obtained for context-free-language reachability problems to be applied to set-constraint problems and vice versa.
Author Keywords: Definite set constraints; Context-free-language reachability; Path problem; Program analysis; Complexity of program-analysis problems







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