Concept
Static program analysis
Overview
In computer science, static program analysis (also known as static analysis or static simulation) is the analysis of computer programs performed without executing them, in contrast with dynamic program analysis, which is performed on programs during their execution in the integrated environment.
The term is usually applied to analysis performed by an automated tool, with human analysis typically being called "program understanding", program comprehension, or code review. In the last of these, software inspection and software walkthroughs are also used. In most cases the analysis is performed on some version of a program's source code, and, in other cases, on some form of its object code.
Two leading approaches to resource certification have been Static Analysis (SA) and Implicit Computational Complexity (ICC). SA is algorithmic in nature: it focuses on a broad programming language of choice, and seeks to determine by syntactic means whether given programs in that language are feasible. In contrast, ICC attempts to create from the outset specialized programming languages or methods that delineate a complexity class. Thus, SA's focus is on compile time, making no demand on the programmer; whereas ICC is a language-design discipline."
The discipline of static analysis should not be confused with linting, which is the process of checking for coding style mistakes.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
We have suffered much from critics who consider it sufficient to criticise our procedure on the slender basis of a knowledge of the dictionary meanings of such terms. For example, a one-to-one correlation depends on the notion of a class with only one member, and this notion is defined without appeal to the concept of the number one. The notion of diversity is all that is wanted.
Alfred North Whitehead, The organisation of thought, educational and scientific
States what Static program analysis is.
The most universal of the forms in which this difference of method is accustomed to present itself, is the ancient feud between what is called theory, and what is called practice or experience. There are, on social and political questions, two kinds of reasoners: there is one portion who term themselves practical men, and call the others theorists; a title which the latter do not reject, though they by no…
John Stuart Mill, Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy
States what Static program analysis is.
But this is not all: law springs from experiment, but not immediately. Experiment is individual, the law deduced from it is general; experiment is only approximate, the law is precise, or at least pretends to be. Experiment is made under conditions always complex, the enunciation of the law eliminates these complications. This is what is called 'correcting the systematic errors.' In a word, to get the law from…
Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science
States what Static program analysis is.
Related ideas
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Type theory.