Pointer Resolve Transformation: Replacing Pointers with Direct Access

As part of our code transformation series, let’s take a closer look at a  topic that’s essential for simplifying pointer-heavy code and enabling static analysis: Pointer Resolve Transformation.

What is Pointer Resolve Transformation?
It replaces pointer accesses with direct variable references – wherever it’s safe. This makes the code easier to analyze and enables further optimizations.

Why use Pointer Resolve?

• Clarifies data dependencies
• Improves static analysis results
• Enables other transformations
• Makes memory access explicit

How does it work?
Based on pointer analysis, emmtrix Studio replaces pointer operations with direct access. Pointer arithmetic is handled using offset variables. For ambiguous pointer targets, the tool can duplicate functions to allow safe resolution.

Limitations
No support for:

• Pointers to pointers
• Casts to different pointer types
• Multidimensional arrays
• Offset tracking across function boundaries

Already posted articles:

• Loop Unrolling
• Loop Interchange
• Bitblast Transformation