Types¶

Solidity is a statically typed language, which means that the type of each variable (state and local) needs to be specified (or at least known - see Type Deduction below) at compile-time. Solidity provides several elementary types which can be combined to form complex types.

In addition, types can interact with each other in expressions containing operators. For a quick reference of the various operators, see Order of Precedence of Operators.

Value Types¶

The following types are also called value types because variables of these types will always be passed by value, i.e. they are always copied when they are used as function arguments or in assignments.

Booleans¶

bool: The possible values are constants true and false.

Operators:

! (logical negation)
&& (logical conjunction, “and”)
|| (logical disjunction, “or”)
== (equality)
!= (inequality)

The operators || and && apply the common short-circuiting rules. This means that in the expression f(x) || g(y), if f(x) evaluates to true, g(y) will not be evaluated even if it may have side-effects.

Integers¶

int / uint: Signed and unsigned integers of various sizes. Keywords uint8 to uint256 in steps of 8 (unsigned of 8 up to 256 bits) and int8 to int256. uint and int are aliases for uint256 and int256, respectively.

Operators:

Comparisons: <=, <, ==, !=, >=, > (evaluate to bool)
Bit operators: &, |, ^ (bitwise exclusive or), ~ (bitwise negation)
Arithmetic operators: +, -, unary -, unary +, *, /, % (remainder), ** (exponentiation)

Division always truncates (it just maps to the DIV opcode of the EVM), but it does not truncate if both operators are literals (or literal expressions).

Division by zero and modulus with zero throws an exception.

Address¶

address: Holds a 20 byte value (size of an Ethereum address). Address types also have members and serve as base for all contracts.

Operators:

<=, <, ==, !=, >= and >

Members of Addresses¶

balance and send

For a quick reference, see Address Related.

It is possible to query the balance of an address using the property balance and to send Ether (in units of wei) to an address using the send function:

address x = 0x123;
address myAddress = this;
if (x.balance < 10 && myAddress.balance >= 10) x.send(10);

Note

If x is a contract address, its code (more specifically: its fallback function, if present) will be executed together with the send call (this is a limitation of the EVM and cannot be prevented). If that execution runs out of gas or fails in any way, the Ether transfer will be reverted. In this case, send returns false.

Warning

There are some dangers in using send: The transfer fails if the call stack depth is at 1024 (this can always be forced by the caller) and it also fails if the recipient runs out of gas. So in order to make safe Ether transfers, always check the return value of send or even better: Use a pattern where the recipient withdraws the money.

call, callcode and delegatecall

Furthermore, to interface with contracts that do not adhere to the ABI, the function call is provided which takes an arbitrary number of arguments of any type. These arguments are padded to 32 bytes and concatenated. One exception is the case where the first argument is encoded to exactly four bytes. In this case, it is not padded to allow the use of function signatures here.

address nameReg = 0x72ba7d8e73fe8eb666ea66babc8116a41bfb10e2;
nameReg.call("register", "MyName");
nameReg.call(bytes4(keccak256("fun(uint256)")), a);

call returns a boolean indicating whether the invoked function terminated (true) or caused an EVM exception (false). It is not possible to access the actual data returned (for this we would need to know the encoding and size in advance).

In a similar way, the function delegatecall can be used: The difference is that only the code of the given address is used, all other aspects (storage, balance, ...) are taken from the current contract. The purpose of delegatecall is to use library code which is stored in another contract. The user has to ensure that the layout of storage in both contracts is suitable for delegatecall to be used. Prior to homestead, only a limited variant called callcode was available that did not provide access to the original msg.sender and msg.value values.

All three functions call, delegatecall and callcode are very low-level functions and should only be used as a last resort as they break the type-safety of Solidity.

Note

All contracts inherit the members of address, so it is possible to query the balance of the current contract using this.balance.

Warning

All these functions are low-level functions and should be used with care. Specifically, any unknown contract might be malicious and if you call it, you hand over control to that contract which could in turn call back into your contract, so be prepared for changes to your state variables when the call returns.

Fixed-size byte arrays¶

bytes1, bytes2, bytes3, ..., bytes32. byte is an alias for bytes1.

Operators:

Comparisons: <=, <, ==, !=, >=, > (evaluate to bool)
Bit operators: &, |, ^ (bitwise exclusive or), ~ (bitwise negation)
Index access: If x is of type bytesI, then x[k] for 0 <= k < I returns the k th byte (read-only).

Members:

.length yields the fixed length of the byte array (read-only).

Dynamically-sized byte array¶

bytes:: Dynamically-sized byte array, see Arrays. Not a value-type!
string:: Dynamically-sized UTF-8-encoded string, see Arrays. Not a value-type!

As a rule of thumb, use bytes for arbitrary-length raw byte data and string for arbitrary-length string (UTF-8) data. If you can limit the length to a certain number of bytes, always use one of bytes1 to bytes32 because they are much cheaper.

Fixed Point Numbers¶

COMING SOON...

Rational and Integer Literals¶

All number literals retain arbitrary precision until they are converted to a non-literal type (i.e. by using them together with a non-literal type). This means that computations do not overflow but also divisions do not truncate.

For example, (2**800 + 1) - 2**800 results in the constant 1 (of type uint8) although intermediate results would not even fit the machine word size. Furthermore, .5 * 8 results in the integer 4 (although non-integers were used in between).

If the result is not an integer, an appropriate ufixed or fixed type is used whose number of fractional bits is as large as required (approximating the rational number in the worst case).

In var x = 1/4;, x will receive the type ufixed0x8 while in var x = 1/3 it will receive the type ufixed0x256 because 1/3 is not finitely representable in binary and will thus be approximated.

Any operator that can be applied to integers can also be applied to literal expressions as long as the operands are integers. If any of the two is fractional, bit operations are disallowed and exponentiation is disallowed if the exponent is fractional (because that might result in a non-rational number).

Note

Most finite decimal fractions like 5.3743 are not finitely representable in binary. The correct type for 5.3743 is ufixed8x248 because that allows to best approximate the number. If you want to use the number together with types like ufixed (i.e. ufixed128x128), you have to explicitly specify the desired precision: x + ufixed(5.3743).

Warning

Division on integer literals used to truncate in earlier versions, but it will now convert into a rational number, i.e. 5 / 2 is not equal to 2, but to 2.5.

Note

Literal expressions are converted to a permanent type as soon as they are used with other expressions. Even though we know that the value of the expression assigned to b in the following example evaluates to an integer, it still uses fixed point types (and not rational number literals) in between and so the code does not compile

uint128 a = 1;
uint128 b = 2.5 + a + 0.5;

String Literals¶

String literals are written with either double or single-quotes ("foo" or 'bar'). As with integer literals, their type can vary, but they are implicitly convertible to bytes1, ..., bytes32, if they fit, to bytes and to string.

String literals support escape characters, such as \n, \xNN and \uNNNN. \xNN takes a hex value and inserts the appropriate byte, while \uNNNN takes a Unicode codepoint and inserts an UTF-8 sequence.

Hexadecimal Literals¶

Hexademical Literals are prefixed with the keyword hex and are enclosed in double or single-quotes (hex"001122FF"). Their content must be a hexadecimal string and their value will be the binary representation of those values.

Hexademical Literals behave like String Literals and have the same convertibility restrictions.

Enums¶

Enums are one way to create a user-defined type in Solidity. They are explicitly convertible to and from all integer types but implicit conversion is not allowed. The explicit conversions check the value ranges at runtime and a failure causes an exception. Enums needs at least one member.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract test {
    enum ActionChoices { GoLeft, GoRight, GoStraight, SitStill }
    ActionChoices choice;
    ActionChoices constant defaultChoice = ActionChoices.GoStraight;

    function setGoStraight() {
        choice = ActionChoices.GoStraight;
    }

    // Since enum types are not part of the ABI, the signature of "getChoice"
    // will automatically be changed to "getChoice() returns (uint8)"
    // for all matters external to Solidity. The integer type used is just
    // large enough to hold all enum values, i.e. if you have more values,
    // `uint16` will be used and so on.
    function getChoice() returns (ActionChoices) {
        return choice;
    }

    function getDefaultChoice() returns (uint) {
        return uint(defaultChoice);
    }
}

Function Types¶

Function types are the types of functions. Variables of function type can be assigned from functions and function parameters of function type can be used to pass functions to and return functions from function calls. Function types come in two flavours - internal and external functions:

Internal functions can only be used inside the current contract (more specifically, inside the current code unit, which also includes internal library functions and inherited functions) because they cannot be executed outside of the context of the current contract. Calling an internal function is realized by jumping to its entry label, just like when calling a function of the current contract internally.

External functions consist of an address and a function signature and they can be passed via and returned from external function calls.

Function types are notated as follows:

function (<parameter types>) {internal|external} [constant] [payable] [returns (<return types>)]

In contrast to the parameter types, the return types cannot be empty - if the function type should not return anything, the whole returns (<return types>) part has to be omitted.

By default, function types are internal, so the internal keyword can be omitted.

There are two ways to access a function in the current contract: Either directly by its name, f, or using this.f. The former will result in an internal function, the latter in an external function.

If a function type variable is not initialized, calling it will result in an exception. The same happens if you call a function after using delete on it.

If external function types are used outside of the context of Solidity, they are treated as the function type, which encodes the address followed by the function identifier together in a single bytes24 type.

Example that shows how to use internal function types:

library ArrayUtils {
  // internal functions can be used in internal library functions because
  // they will be part of the same code context
  function map(uint[] memory self, function (uint) returns (uint) f)
    returns (uint[] memory r)
  {
    r = new uint[](self.length);
    for (uint i = 0; i < self.length; i++) {
      r[i] = f(self[i]);
    }
  }
  function reduce(
    uint[] memory self,
    function (uint) returns (uint) f
  )
    returns (uint r)
  {
    r = self[0];
    for (uint i = 1; i < self.length; i++) {
      r = f(r, self[i]);
    }
  }
  function range(uint length) returns (uint[] memory r) {
    r = new uint[](length);
    for (uint i = 0; i < r.length; i++) {
      r[i] = i;
    }
  }
}

contract Pyramid {
  using ArrayUtils for *;
  function pyramid(uint l) return (uint) {
    return ArrayUtils.range(l).map(square).reduce(sum);
  }
  function square(uint x) internal returns (uint) {
    return x * x;
  }
  function sum(uint x, uint y) internal returns (uint) {
    return x + y;
  }
}

Another example that uses external function types:

contract Oracle {
  struct Request {
    bytes data;
    function(bytes) external callback;
  }
  Request[] requests;
  event NewRequest(uint);
  function query(bytes data, function(bytes) external callback) {
    requests.push(Request(data, callback));
    NewRequest(requests.length - 1);
  }
  function reply(uint requestID, bytes response) {
    // Here goes the check that the reply comes from a trusted source
    requests[requestID].callback(response);
  }
}

contract OracleUser {
  Oracle constant oracle = 0x1234567; // known contract
  function buySomething() {
    oracle.query("USD", oracleResponse);
  }
  function oracleResponse(bytes response) {
    if (msg.sender != oracle) throw;
    // Use the data
  }
}

Note that lambda or inline functions are planned but not yet supported.

Reference Types¶

Complex types, i.e. types which do not always fit into 256 bits have to be handled more carefully than the value-types we have already seen. Since copying them can be quite expensive, we have to think about whether we want them to be stored in memory (which is not persisting) or storage (where the state variables are held).

Data location¶

Every complex type, i.e. arrays and structs, has an additional annotation, the “data location”, about whether it is stored in memory or in storage. Depending on the context, there is always a default, but it can be overridden by appending either storage or memory to the type. The default for function parameters (including return parameters) is memory, the default for local variables is storage and the location is forced to storage for state variables (obviously).

There is also a third data location, “calldata”, which is a non-modifyable non-persistent area where function arguments are stored. Function parameters (not return parameters) of external functions are forced to “calldata” and it behaves mostly like memory.

Data locations are important because they change how assignments behave: Assignments between storage and memory and also to a state variable (even from other state variables) always create an independent copy. Assignments to local storage variables only assign a reference though, and this reference always points to the state variable even if the latter is changed in the meantime. On the other hand, assignments from a memory stored reference type to another memory-stored reference type does not create a copy.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract C {
    uint[] x; // the data location of x is storage

    // the data location of memoryArray is memory
    function f(uint[] memoryArray) {
        x = memoryArray; // works, copies the whole array to storage
        var y = x; // works, assigns a pointer, data location of y is storage
        y[7]; // fine, returns the 8th element
        y.length = 2; // fine, modifies x through y
        delete x; // fine, clears the array, also modifies y
        // The following does not work; it would need to create a new temporary /
        // unnamed array in storage, but storage is "statically" allocated:
        // y = memoryArray;
        // This does not work either, since it would "reset" the pointer, but there
        // is no sensible location it could point to.
        // delete y;
        g(x); // calls g, handing over a reference to x
        h(x); // calls h and creates an independent, temporary copy in memory
    }

    function g(uint[] storage storageArray) internal {}
    function h(uint[] memoryArray) {}
}

Summary¶

Forced data location:

parameters (not return) of external functions: calldata
state variables: storage

Default data location:

parameters (also return) of functions: memory
all other local variables: storage

Arrays¶

Arrays can have a compile-time fixed size or they can be dynamic. For storage arrays, the element type can be arbitrary (i.e. also other arrays, mappings or structs). For memory arrays, it cannot be a mapping and has to be an ABI type if it is an argument of a publicly-visible function.

An array of fixed size k and element type T is written as T[k], an array of dynamic size as T[]. As an example, an array of 5 dynamic arrays of uint is uint[][5] (note that the notation is reversed when compared to some other languages). To access the second uint in the third dynamic array, you use x[2][1] (indices are zero-based and access works in the opposite way of the declaration, i.e. x[2] shaves off one level in the type from the right).

Variables of type bytes and string are special arrays. A bytes is similar to byte[], but it is packed tightly in calldata. string is equal to bytes but does not allow length or index access (for now).

So bytes should always be preferred over byte[] because it is cheaper.

Note

If you want to access the byte-representation of a string s, use bytes(s).length / bytes(s)[7] = 'x';. Keep in mind that you are accessing the low-level bytes of the UTF-8 representation, and not the individual characters!

It is possible to mark arrays public and have Solidity create an accessor. The numeric index will become a required parameter for the accessor.

Allocating Memory Arrays¶

Creating arrays with variable length in memory can be done using the new keyword. As opposed to storage arrays, it is not possible to resize memory arrays by assigning to the .length member.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract C {
    function f(uint len) {
        uint[] memory a = new uint[](7);
        bytes memory b = new bytes(len);
        // Here we have a.length == 7 and b.length == len
        a[6] = 8;
    }
}

Array Literals / Inline Arrays¶

Array literals are arrays that are written as an expression and are not assigned to a variable right away.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract C {
    function f() {
        g([uint(1), 2, 3]);
    }
    function g(uint[3] _data) {
        // ...
    }
}

The type of an array literal is a memory array of fixed size whose base type is the common type of the given elements. The type of [1, 2, 3] is uint8[3] memory, because the type of each of these constants is uint8. Because of that, it was necessary to convert the first element in the example above to uint. Note that currently, fixed size memory arrays cannot be assigned to dynamically-sized memory arrays, i.e. the following is not possible:

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract C {
    function f() {
        // The next line creates a type error because uint[3] memory
        // cannot be converted to uint[] memory.
        uint[] x = [uint(1), 3, 4];
}

It is planned to remove this restriction in the future but currently creates some complications because of how arrays are passed in the ABI.

Members¶

length:: Arrays have a length member to hold their number of elements. Dynamic arrays can be resized in storage (not in memory) by changing the .length member. This does not happen automatically when attempting to access elements outside the current length. The size of memory arrays is fixed (but dynamic, i.e. it can depend on runtime parameters) once they are created.
push:: Dynamic storage arrays and bytes (not string) have a member function called push that can be used to append an element at the end of the array. The function returns the new length.

Warning

It is not yet possible to use arrays of arrays in external functions.

Warning

Due to limitations of the EVM, it is not possible to return dynamic content from external function calls. The function f in contract C { function f() returns (uint[]) { ... } } will return something if called from web3.js, but not if called from Solidity.

The only workaround for now is to use large statically-sized arrays.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract ArrayContract {
    uint[2**20] m_aLotOfIntegers;
    // Note that the following is not a pair of arrays but an array of pairs.
    bool[2][] m_pairsOfFlags;
    // newPairs is stored in memory - the default for function arguments

    function setAllFlagPairs(bool[2][] newPairs) {
        // assignment to a storage array replaces the complete array
        m_pairsOfFlags = newPairs;
    }

    function setFlagPair(uint index, bool flagA, bool flagB) {
        // access to a non-existing index will throw an exception
        m_pairsOfFlags[index][0] = flagA;
        m_pairsOfFlags[index][1] = flagB;
    }

    function changeFlagArraySize(uint newSize) {
        // if the new size is smaller, removed array elements will be cleared
        m_pairsOfFlags.length = newSize;
    }

    function clear() {
        // these clear the arrays completely
        delete m_pairsOfFlags;
        delete m_aLotOfIntegers;
        // identical effect here
        m_pairsOfFlags.length = 0;
    }

    bytes m_byteData;

    function byteArrays(bytes data) {
        // byte arrays ("bytes") are different as they are stored without padding,
        // but can be treated identical to "uint8[]"
        m_byteData = data;
        m_byteData.length += 7;
        m_byteData[3] = 8;
        delete m_byteData[2];
    }

    function addFlag(bool[2] flag) returns (uint) {
        return m_pairsOfFlags.push(flag);
    }

    function createMemoryArray(uint size) returns (bytes) {
        // Dynamic memory arrays are created using `new`:
        uint[2][] memory arrayOfPairs = new uint[2][](size);
        // Create a dynamic byte array:
        bytes memory b = new bytes(200);
        for (uint i = 0; i < b.length; i++)
            b[i] = byte(i);
        return b;
    }
}

Structs¶

Solidity provides a way to define new types in the form of structs, which is shown in the following example:

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract CrowdFunding {
    // Defines a new type with two fields.
    struct Funder {
        address addr;
        uint amount;
    }

    struct Campaign {
        address beneficiary;
        uint fundingGoal;
        uint numFunders;
        uint amount;
        mapping (uint => Funder) funders;
    }

    uint numCampaigns;
    mapping (uint => Campaign) campaigns;

    function newCampaign(address beneficiary, uint goal) returns (uint campaignID) {
        campaignID = numCampaigns++; // campaignID is return variable
        // Creates new struct and saves in storage. We leave out the mapping type.
        campaigns[campaignID] = Campaign(beneficiary, goal, 0, 0);
    }

    function contribute(uint campaignID) payable {
        Campaign c = campaigns[campaignID];
        // Creates a new temporary memory struct, initialised with the given values
        // and copies it over to storage.
        // Note that you can also use Funder(msg.sender, msg.value) to initialise.
        c.funders[c.numFunders++] = Funder({addr: msg.sender, amount: msg.value});
        c.amount += msg.value;
    }

    function checkGoalReached(uint campaignID) returns (bool reached) {
        Campaign c = campaigns[campaignID];
        if (c.amount < c.fundingGoal)
            return false;
        uint amount = c.amount;
        c.amount = 0;
        if (!c.beneficiary.send(amount))
            throw;
        return true;
    }
}

The contract does not provide the full functionality of a crowdfunding contract, but it contains the basic concepts necessary to understand structs. Struct types can be used inside mappings and arrays and they can itself contain mappings and arrays.

It is not possible for a struct to contain a member of its own type, although the struct itself can be the value type of a mapping member. This restriction is necessary, as the size of the struct has to be finite.

Note how in all the functions, a struct type is assigned to a local variable (of the default storage data location). This does not copy the struct but only stores a reference so that assignments to members of the local variable actually write to the state.

Of course, you can also directly access the members of the struct without assigning it to a local variable, as in campaigns[campaignID].amount = 0.

Mappings¶

Mapping types are declared as mapping _KeyType => _ValueType, where _KeyType can be almost any type except for a mapping and _ValueType can actually be any type, including mappings.

Mappings can be seen as hashtables which are virtually initialized such that every possible key exists and is mapped to a value whose byte-representation is all zeros: a type’s default value. The similarity ends here, though: The key data is not actually stored in a mapping, only its keccak256 hash used to look up the value.

Because of this, mappings do not have a length or a concept of a key or value being “set”.

Mappings are only allowed for state variables (or as storage reference types in internal functions).

It is possible to mark mappings public and have Solidity create an accessor. The _KeyType will become a required parameter for the accessor and it will return _ValueType.

The _ValueType can be a mapping too. The accessor will have one parameter for each _KeyType, recursively.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract MappingExample {
    mapping(address => uint) public balances;

    function update(uint newBalance) {
        balances[msg.sender] = newBalance;
    }
}

contract MappingUser {
    function f() returns (uint) {
        return MappingExample(<address>).balances(this);
    }
}

Note

Mappings are not iterable, but it is possible to implement a data structure on top of them. For an example, see iterable mapping.

Operators Involving LValues¶

If a is an LValue (i.e. a variable or something that can be assigned to), the following operators are available as shorthands:

a += e is equivalent to a = a + e. The operators -=, *=, /=, %=, a |=, &= and ^= are defined accordingly. a++ and a-- are equivalent to a += 1 / a -= 1 but the expression itself still has the previous value of a. In contrast, --a and ++a have the same effect on a but return the value after the change.

delete¶

delete a assigns the initial value for the type to a. I.e. for integers it is equivalent to a = 0, but it can also be used on arrays, where it assigns a dynamic array of length zero or a static array of the same length with all elements reset. For structs, it assigns a struct with all members reset.

delete has no effect on whole mappings (as the keys of mappings may be arbitrary and are generally unknown). So if you delete a struct, it will reset all members that are not mappings and also recurse into the members unless they are mappings. However, individual keys and what they map to can be deleted.

It is important to note that delete a really behaves like an assignment to a, i.e. it stores a new object in a.

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract DeleteExample {
    uint data;
    uint[] dataArray;

    function f() {
        uint x = data;
        delete x; // sets x to 0, does not affect data
        delete data; // sets data to 0, does not affect x which still holds a copy
        uint[] y = dataArray;
        delete dataArray; // this sets dataArray.length to zero, but as uint[] is a complex object, also
        // y is affected which is an alias to the storage object
        // On the other hand: "delete y" is not valid, as assignments to local variables
        // referencing storage objects can only be made from existing storage objects.
    }
}

Conversions between Elementary Types¶

Implicit Conversions¶

If an operator is applied to different types, the compiler tries to implicitly convert one of the operands to the type of the other (the same is true for assignments). In general, an implicit conversion between value-types is possible if it makes sense semantically and no information is lost: uint8 is convertible to uint16 and int128 to int256, but int8 is not convertible to uint256 (because uint256 cannot hold e.g. -1). Furthermore, unsigned integers can be converted to bytes of the same or larger size, but not vice-versa. Any type that can be converted to uint160 can also be converted to address.

Explicit Conversions¶

If the compiler does not allow implicit conversion but you know what you are doing, an explicit type conversion is sometimes possible. Note that this may give you some unexpected behaviour so be sure to test to ensure that the result is what you want! Take the following example where you are converting a negative int8 to a uint:

int8 y = -3;
uint x = uint(y);

At the end of this code snippet, x will have the value 0xfffff..fd (64 hex characters), which is -3 in the two’s complement representation of 256 bits.

If a type is explicitly converted to a smaller type, higher-order bits are cut off:

uint32 a = 0x12345678;
uint16 b = uint16(a); // b will be 0x5678 now

Type Deduction¶

For convenience, it is not always necessary to explicitly specify the type of a variable, the compiler automatically infers it from the type of the first expression that is assigned to the variable:

uint24 x = 0x123;
var y = x;

Here, the type of y will be uint24. Using var is not possible for function parameters or return parameters.

Warning

The type is only deduced from the first assignment, so the loop in the following snippet is infinite, as i will have the type uint8 and any value of this type is smaller than 2000. for (var i = 0; i < 2000; i++) { ... }