Polyvariance

In program analysis, a polyvariant or context-sensitive analysis (as opposed to a monovariant or context-insensitive analysis) analyzes each function multiple times—typically once at each call site—to improve the precision of the analysis.^[1] Polyvariance is common in data-flow and pointer analyses.

Forms of polyvariance include:

• Call-site sensitivity^[2]
• The Cartesian product algorithm^[3]
• Object sensitivity^[2]
• Type sensitivity^[2]

The first two are more often used for dataflow analyses, the latter two are more frequently used for pointer analyses.