Static analysis of reachable methods and fields in object-oriented applications using object instantiation

摘要

Exemplary embodiments of the present invention comprise an algorithm described herein that utilizes a technique to shrink a set of potentially reachable elements to a close approximation of the actually reachable elements within a software application by closely approximating how the application executes at runtime. The algorithm attempts to identify all of the reachable elements of an object-oriented software application by starting with the entry points into the application and thereafter progressively determining all of the software elements within the application that are reachable. The algorithm instantiates application objects in the same way they would be instantiated at runtime and passes references to these objects from one method and field to the next; emulating as closely as possible object instantiation performed by the application at runtime.