Control Flow Analysis Definition

Flow Analysis — method applying to control flow analysis of paths of the running program resulting from its control structures. This is aimed to give insight into behavior and structure of a program, so that developers are able to find probably problems, optimize performance, and, generally, give better quality of a code. In particular, this would come in handy when understanding unreached code, and possibly even such evil things as being stuck in a loop forever or branching to an unexpected branch.

The method of Control Flow Analysis is of especially great importance in the process of the verification, debugging, and optimization of the program. This assists a developer to understand the movement of control over the code, predict the functioning of the code under different conditions and understand possibilities for its optimization. Techniques of Control Flow Analysis are mostly the static analysis tools, dynamic analysis tools, and software visualization techniques.