Assessing the usefulness of type inference algorithms in representing Java control flow to support software maintenance tasks

A wide range of techniques for supporting software maintenance tasks rely on representations of program control flow. The accuracy of these representations can be important to the effectiveness and efficiency of these techniques. The Java programming language has introduced structured exception handling features that complicate the task of representing control flow. Previous work has attempted to address these complications by using type inference algorithms to analyze the control flow effects of exceptions, but to date, there has been no study of whether the use of these algorithms is justified. In this paper we report results of an empirical study addressing this issue. We find that type inference algorithms can lead to more accurate representations of control flow, but this improvement does not necessarily translate into benefits for maintenance techniques that use them. It follows that type inference algorithms should not just automatically be applied; rather, the tradeoffs of applying them must first be assessed with respect to particular maintenance techniques and workloads.