Enhancing Semantic Understanding in Pointer Analysis using Large Language Models

Abstract

Pointer analysis has been studied for over four decades. However, existing frameworks continue to suffer from the propagation of incorrect facts. A major limitation stems from their insufficient semantic understanding of code, resulting in overly conservative treatment of user-defined functions. Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) present new opportunities to bridge this gap. In this paper, we propose LMPA (LLM-enhanced Pointer Analysis), a vision that integrates LLMs into pointer analysis to enhance both precision and scalability. LMPA identifies user-defined functions that resemble system APIs and models them accordingly, thereby mitigating erroneous cross-calling-context propagation. Furthermore, it enhances summary-based analysis by inferring initial points-to sets and introducing a novel summary strategy augmented with natural language. Finally, we discuss the key challenges involved in realizing this vision.