The directed multigraph defined by interpreting basic blocks as vertices, and flow relationships as edges, yields its control flow graph (CFG). A start node exists for each CFG, corresponding to the basic block whose header is the first instruction of the program.
The antisymmetric, transitive, reflexive domination relation is defined on vertices of a CFG (and thus basic blocks of the underlying program). A vertex a dominates b (a <= b) if every path from the start node s to b passes through a. A vertex a properly dominates b (a < b) if a dominates and is not equal to b. A vertex a directly/immediately dominates b (a <d b) if a properly dominates b, and a dominates no vertex c that dominates b. This relation induces the dominator tree, where nodes dominate all descendents in the tree. The start node s dominates all nodes, properly dominates all nodes but itself, and roots the dominator tree.
