fieldinsensitive

Fieldinsensitive, in computer science, refers to a mode of static analysis—often in the context of pointer or alias analysis—where the analysis does not distinguish between the fields of a compound data structure. Instead, fields of the same base type are treated as a single abstract location. This yields faster analysis at the cost of precision, making it more scalable for large codebases.

In contrast, field-sensitive analysis distinguishes between different fields within a structure or object, allowing the analyzer to track pointers separately for each field. Field-insensitive analysis may cause more conservative results, as pointers to different fields can be treated as potentially aliasing the same location.

How it works: when analyzing a struct or record, a field-insensitive approach abstracts all fields into one combined location per allocation site or per base type. Pointers originating from within that structure may be considered to reference any field, increasing the chance of reported aliases. Nested or composite structures are handled in a similarly coarse manner, depending on the implementation.

Applications and trade-offs: field-insensitive analyses are favored for their scalability in large programs or when a fast, coarse-grained view is sufficient. They are commonly used as initial analyses in toolchains or as components of multi-pass analyses. The trade-off is reduced precision, with more false positives in aliasing and weaker opportunities for field-level optimizations such as fine-grained scalar replacement.

Limitations: not suitable for code with heavy use of distinct fields where precise alias information is crucial. See also field-sensitive analysis, alias analysis, pointer analysis, and static analysis.