AliasAnalysis pass performs a conservative flow-insensitive alias analysis for the whole program based on unification-based approach. It scans the program and creates a map to store a (Symbol x, Set y) pair, where x is a pointer-type Symbol that are defined in the program and y is an alias set for x. AliasAnalysis provides methods to access the alias analysis result.

AliasAnalysis also provides a conservative approach to identifying aliases between parameters to functions and between parameters and global variables. The default for C is that all pass by reference parameters are aliased to each other and aliased to global variables accessed within the function. In order to support advanced analysis, Cetus internally provides other levels of alias analysis. Parameters may not be aliased to each other, and also, they may not be aliased to global variables even (FORTRAN concept). Knowing such information manually, Cetus users can access these levels of alias analysis via the command line (see command-line options).

Refer to the Cetus API documentation for methods to access alias information in user passes.