Solidity Documentation

Solidity Documentation
Release 0.2.0
Ethereum
August 22, 2016

Contents
1 Useful links 3
2 Available Solidity Integrations 5
3 Solidity Tools 7
4 Language Documentation 9
5 Contents 11
5.1 Introduction to Smart Contracts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.2 Installing Solidity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.3 Solidity by Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.4 Solidity in Depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
5.5 Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
5.6 Style Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
5.7 Common Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
5.8 Frequently Asked Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
i
ii
Solidity Documentation, Release 0.2.0
Solidity is a high-level language whose syntax is similar to that of JavaScript and it is designed to compile to code
for the Ethereum Virtual Machine. As you will see, it is possible to create contracts for voting, crowdfunding, blind
auctions, multi-signature wallets and more.
Note: The best way to try out Solidity right now is using the Browser-Based Compiler (it can take a while to load,
please be patient).
Contents 1
2 Contents
CHAPTER 1
Useful links
• Ethereum
• Changelog
• Story Backlog
• Source Code
• Ethereum Stackexchange
• Gitter Chat
3
4 Chapter 1. Useful links

CHAPTER 2
Available Solidity Integrations
• Browser-Based Compiler Browser-based IDE with integrated compiler and Solidity runtime environment
without server-side components.
• Ethereum Studio Specialized web IDE that also provides shell access to a complete Ethereum environment.
• Visual Studio Extension Solidity plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio that includes the Solidity compiler.
• Package for SublimeText — Solidity language syntax Solidity syntax highlighting for SublimeText editor.
• Atom Ethereum interface Plugin for the Atom editor that features syntax highlighting, compilation and a
runtime environment (requires backend node).
• Atom Solidity Linter Plugin for the Atom editor that provides Solidity linting.
• Visual Studio Code extension Solidity plugin for Microsoft Visual Studio Code that includes syntax highlight-
ing and the Solidity compiler.
• Emacs Solidity Plugin for the Emacs editor providing syntax highlighting and compilation error reporting.
• Vim Solidity Plugin for the Vim editor providing syntax highlighting.
• Vim Syntastic Plugin for the Vim editor providing compile checking.
Discontinued:
• Mix IDE Qt based IDE for designing, debugging and testing solidity smart contracts.
5
6 Chapter 2. Available Solidity Integrations

CHAPTER 3
Solidity Tools
• Solidity REPL Try Solidity instantly with a command-line Solidity console.

• solgraph Visualize Solidity control flow and highlight potential security vulnerabilities.
• evmdis EVM Disassembler that performs static analysis on the bytecode to provide a higher level of abstraction
than raw EVM operations.
7
8 Chapter 3. Solidity Tools

CHAPTER 4
Language Documentation
On the next pages, we will first see a simple smart contract written in Solidity followed by the basics about blockchains
and the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
The next section will explain several features of Solidity by giving useful example contracts Remember that you can
always try out the contracts in your browser!
The last and most extensive section will cover all aspects of Solidity in depth.
If you still have questions, you can try searching or asking on the Ethereum Stackexchange site, or come to our gitter
channel. Ideas for improving Solidity or this documentation are always welcome!
See also Russian version ( ).
9
10 Chapter 4. Language Documentation

CHAPTER 5
Contents
Keyword Index, Search Page
5.1 Introduction to Smart Contracts
5.1.1 A Simple Smart Contract
Let us begin with the most basic example. It is fine if you do not understand everything right now, we will go into
more detail later.
Storage
contract SimpleStorage {
uint storedData;
function set(uint x) {
storedData = x;
}
function get() constant returns (uint retVal) {

return storedData;
}
}
A contract in the sense of Solidity is a collection of code (its functions) and data (its state) that resides at a specific
address on the Ethereum blockchain. The line uint storedData; declares a state variable called storedData
of type uint (unsigned integer of 256 bits). You can think of it as a single slot in a database that can be queried and
altered by calling functions of the code that manages the database. In the case of Ethereum, this is always the owning
contract. And in this case, the functions set and get can be used to modify or retrieve the value of the variable.
To access a state variable, you do not need the prefix this. as is common in other languages.
This contract does not yet do much apart from (due to the infrastructure built by Ethereum) allowing anyone to store
a single number that is accessible by anyone in the world without (feasible) a way to prevent you from publishing this
number. Of course, anyone could just call set again with a different value and overwrite your number, but the number
will still be stored in the history of the blockchain. Later, we will see how you can impose access restrictions so that
only you can alter the number.
11
Subcurrency Example
The following contract will implement the simplest form of a cryptocurrency. It is possible to generate coins out
of thin air, but only the person that created the contract will be able to do that (it is trivial to implement a different
issuance scheme). Furthermore, anyone can send coins to each other without any need for registering with username
and password - all you need is an Ethereum keypair.
contract Coin {
// The keyword "public" makes those variables
// readable from outside.
address public minter;
mapping (address => uint) public balances;
// Events allow light clients to react on

// changes efficiently.
event Sent(address from, address to, uint amount);
// This is the constructor whose code is

// run only when the contract is created.
function Coin() {
minter = msg.sender;
}
function mint(address receiver, uint amount) {

if (msg.sender != minter) return;
balances[receiver] += amount;
}
function send(address receiver, uint amount) {

if (balances[msg.sender] < amount) return;
balances[msg.sender] -= amount;
balances[receiver] += amount;
Sent(msg.sender, receiver, amount);
}
}
This contract introduces some new concepts, let us go through them one by one.
The line address public minter; declares a state variable of type address that is publicly accessible. The
address type is a 160 bit value that does not allow any arithmetic operations. It is suitable for storing addresses
of contracts or keypairs belonging to external persons. The keyword public automatically generates a function that
allows you to access the current value of the state variable. Without this keyword, other contracts have no way to
access the variable and only the code of this contract can write to it. The function will look something like this:
function minter() returns (address) { return minter; }
Of course, adding a function exactly like that will not work because we would have a function and a state variable with
the same name, but hopefully, you get the idea - the compiler figures that out for you.
The next line, mapping (address => uint) public balances; also creates a public state variable, but
it is a more complex datatype. The type maps addresses to unsigned integers. 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. This analogy does not go too far, though, as it is neither possible to obtain a list of all keys of a mapping,
nor a list of all values. So either keep in mind (or better, keep a list or use a more advanced data type) what you added
to the mapping or use it in a context where this is not needed, like this one. The accessor function created by the
public keyword is a bit more complex in this case. It roughly looks like the following:
function balances(address _account) returns (uint balance) {
return balances[_account];
12 Chapter 5. Contents
As you see, you can use this function to easily query the balance of a single account.
The line event Sent(address from, address to, uint amount); declares a so-called “event”
which is fired in the last line of the function send. User interfaces (as well as server appliances of course) can
listen for those events being fired on the blockchain without much cost. As soon as it is fired, the listener will also
receive the arguments from, to and amount, which makes it easy to track transactions. In order to listen for this
event, you would use
Coin.Sent().watch({}, '', function(error, result) {
if (!error) {
console.log("Coin transfer: " + result.args.amount +
" coins were sent from " + result.args.from +
" to " + result.args.to + ".");
console.log("Balances now:\n" +
"Sender: " + Coin.balances.call(result.args.from) +
"Receiver: " + Coin.balances.call(result.args.to));
}
}
Note how the automatically generated function balances is called from the user interface.
The special function Coin is the constructor which is run during creation of the contract and cannot be called after-
wards. It permanently stores the address of the person creating the contract: msg (together with tx and block) is a
magic global variable that contains some properties which allow access to the blockchain. msg.sender is always
the address where the current (external) function call came from.
Finally, the functions that will actually end up with the contract and can be called by users and contracts alike are
mint and send. If mint is called by anyone except the account that created the contract, nothing will happen. On
the other hand, send can be used by anyone (who already has some of these coins) to send coins to anyone else. Note
that if you use this contract to send coins to an address, you will not see anything when you look at that address on a
blockchain explorer, because the fact that you sent coins and the changed balances are only stored in the data storage
of this particular coin contract. By the use of events it is relatively easy to create a “blockchain explorer” that tracks
transactions and balances of your new coin.
5.1.2 Blockchain Basics
Blockchains as a concept are not too hard to understand for programmers. The reason is that most of the complications
(mining, hashing, elliptic-curve cryptography, peer-to-peer networks, ...) are just there to provide a certain set of
features and promises. Once you accept these features as given, you do not have to worry about the underlying
technology - or do you have to know how Amazon’s AWS works internally in order to use it?
Transactions
A blockchain is a globally shared, transactional database. This means that everyone can read entries in the database
just by participating in the network. If you want to change something in the database, you have to create a so-called
transaction which has to be accepted by all others. The word transaction implies that the change you want to make
(assume you want to change two values at the same time) is either not done at all or completely applied. Furthermore,
while your transaction is applied to the database, no other transaction can alter it.
As an example, imagine a table that lists the balances of all accounts in an electronic currency. If a transfer from one
account to another is requested, the transactional nature of the database ensures that if the amount is subtracted from
one account, it is always added to the other account. If due to whatever reason, adding the amount to the target account
is not possible, the source account is also not modified.
5.1. Introduction to Smart Contracts 13

Furthermore, a transaction is always cryptographically signed by the sender (creator). This makes it straightforward
to guard access to specific modifications of the database. In the example of the electronic currency, a simple check
ensures that only the person holding the keys to the account can transfer money from it.
Blocks
One major obstacle to overcome is what in bitcoin terms is called “double-spend attack”: What happens if two trans-
actions exist in the network that both want to empty an account, a so-called conflict?
The abstract answer to this is that you do not have to care. An order of the transactions will be selected for you, the
transactions will be bundled into what is called a “block” and then they will be executed and distributed among all
participating nodes. If two transactions contradict each other, the one that ends up being second will be rejected and
not become part of the block.
These blocks form a linear sequence in time and that is where the word “blockchain” derives from. Blocks are added
to the chain in rather regular intervals - for Ethereum this is roughly every 17 seconds.
As part of the “order selection mechanism” (which is called “mining”) it may happen that blocks are reverted from
time to time, but only at the “tip” of the chain. The more blocks are reverted the less likely it is. So it might be that
your transactions are reverted and even removed from the blockchain, but the longer you wait, the less likely it will
be.
5.1.3 The Ethereum Virtual Machine
Overview
The Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM is the runtime environment for smart contracts in Ethereum. It is not only
sandboxed but actually completely isolated, which means that code running inside the EVM has no access to network,
filesystem or other processes. Smart contracts even have limited access to other smart contracts.
Accounts
There are two kinds of accounts in Ethereum which share the same address space: External accounts that are con-
trolled by public-private key pairs (i.e. humans) and contract accounts which are controlled by the code stored
together with the account.
The address of an external account is determined from the public key while the address of a contract is determined at
the time the contract is created (it is derived from the creator address and the number of transactions sent from that
address, the so-called “nonce”).
Apart from the fact whether an account stores code or not, the EVM treats the two types equally, though.
Every account has a persistent key-value store mapping 256 bit words to 256 bit words called storage.
Furthermore, every account has a balance in Ether (in “Wei” to be exact) which can be modified by sending transac-
tions that include Ether.
Transactions
A transaction is a message that is sent from one account to another account (which might be the same or the special
zero-account, see below). It can include binary data (its payload) and Ether.
If the target account contains code, that code is executed and the payload is provided as input data.
If the target account is the zero-account (the account with the address 0), the transaction creates a new contract. As
already mentioned, the address of that contract is not the zero address but an address derived from the sender and its
number of transaction sent (the “nonce”). The payload of such a contract creation transaction is taken to be EVM
bytecode and executed. The output of this execution is permanently stored as the code of the contract. This means that
in order to create a contract, you do not send the actual code of the contract, but in fact code that returns that code.
Gas
Upon creation, each transaction is charged with a certain amount of gas, whose purpose is to limit the amount of work
that is needed to execute the transaction and to pay for this execution. While the EVM executes the transaction, the
gas is gradually depleted according to specific rules.
The gas price is a value set by the creator of the transaction, who has to pay gas_price * gas up front from the
sending account. If some gas is left after the execution, it is refunded in the same way.
If the gas is used up at any point (i.e. it is negative), an out-of-gas exception is triggered, which reverts all modifications
made to the state in the current call frame.
Storage, Memory and the Stack
Each account has a persistent memory area which is called storage. Storage is a key-value store that maps 256 bit
words to 256 bit words. It is not possible to enumerate storage from within a contract and it is comparatively costly to
read and even more so, to modify storage. A contract can neither read nor write to any storage apart from its own.
The second memory area is called memory, of which a contract obtains a freshly cleared instance for each message
call. Memory can be addressed at byte level, but read and written to in 32 byte (256 bit) chunks. Memory is more
costly the larger it grows (it scales quadratically).
The EVM is not a register machine but a stack machine, so all computations are performed on an area called the stack.
It has a maximum size of 1024 elements and contains words of 256 bits. Access to the stack is limited to the top end
in the following way: It is possible to copy one of the topmost 16 elements to the top of the stack or swap the topmost
element with one of the 16 elements below it. All other operations take the topmost two (or one, or more, depending
on the operation) elements from the stack and push the result onto the stack. Of course it is possible to move stack
elements to storage or memory, but it is not possible to just access arbitrary elements deeper in the stack without first
removing the top of the stack.
Instruction Set
The instruction set of the EVM is kept minimal in order to avoid incorrect implementations which could cause con-
sensus problems. All instructions operate on the basic data type, 256 bit words. The usual arithmetic, bit, logical
and comparison operations are present. Conditional and unconditional jumps are possible. Furthermore, contracts can
access relevant properties of the current block like its number and timestamp.
Message Calls
Contracts can call other contracts or send Ether to non-contract accounts by the means of message calls. Message calls
are similar to transactions, in that they have a source, a target, data payload, Ether, gas and return data. In fact, every
transaction consists of a top-level message call which in turn can create further message calls.
A contract can decide how much of its remaining gas should be sent with the inner message call and how much it
wants to retain. If an out-of-gas exception happens in the inner call (or any other exception), this will be signalled by
an error value put onto the stack. In this case, only the gas sent together with the call is used up. In Solidity, the calling
contract causes a manual exception by default in such situations, so that exceptions “bubble up” the call stack.
5.1. Introduction to Smart Contracts 15

As already said, the called contract (which can be the same as the caller) will receive a freshly cleared instance of
memory and has access to the call payload - which will be provided in a separate area called the calldata. After it
finished execution, it can return data which will be stored at a location in the caller’s memory preallocated by the
caller.
Calls are limited to a depth of 1024, which means that for more complex operations, loops should be preferred over
recursive calls.
Delegatecall / Callcode and Libraries
There exists a special variant of a message call, named delegatecall which is identical to a message call apart from
the fact that the code at the target address is executed in the context of the calling contract and msg.sender and
msg.value do not change their values.
This means that a contract can dynamically load code from a different address at runtime. Storage, current address
and balance still refer to the calling contract, only the code is taken from the called address.
This makes it possible to implement the “library” feature in Solidity: Reusable library code that can be applied to a
contract’s storage in order to e.g. implement a complex data structure.
Logs
It is possible to store data in a specially indexed data structure that maps all they way up to the block level. This feature
called logs is used by Solidity in order to implement events. Contracts cannot access log data after it has been created,
but they can be efficiently accessed from outside the blockchain. Since some part of the log data is stored in bloom
filters, it is possible to search for this data in an efficient and cryptographically secure way, so network peers that do
not download the whole blockchain (“light clients”) can still find these logs.
Create
Contracts can even create other contracts using a special opcode (i.e. they do not simply call the zero address). The
only difference between these create calls and normal message calls is that the payload data is executed and the result
stored as code and the caller / creator receives the address of the new contract on the stack.
Selfdestruct
The only possibility that code is removed from the blockchain is when a contract at that address performs the
SELFDESTRUCT operation. The remaining Ether stored at that address is sent to a designated target and then the
storage and code is removed.
Note that even if a contract’s code does not contain the SELFDESTRUCT opcode, it can still perform that operation
using delegatecall or callcode.
5.2 Installing Solidity
5.2.1 Browser-Solidity
If you just want to try Solidity for small contracts, you can try browser-solidity which does not need any instal-
lation. If you want to use it without connection to the Internet, you can also just save the page locally or clone
http://github.com/ethereum/browser-solidity.
5.2.2 npm / Node.js
This is probably the most portable and most convenient way to install Solidity locally.
A platform-independent JavaScript library is provided by compiling the C++ source into JavaScript using Emscripten
for browser-solidity and there is also an npm package available.
To install it, simply use
npm install solc
Details about the usage of the Node.js package can be found in the solc-js repository.
5.2.3 Binary Packages
Binary packages of Solidity together with its IDE Mix are available through the C++ bundle of Ethereum.
5.2.4 Building from Source
Building Solidity is quite similar on MacOS X, Ubuntu and probably other Unices. This guide starts explaining how
to install the dependencies for each platform and then shows how to build Solidity itself.
MacOS X
Requirements:
• OS X Yosemite (10.10.5)
• Homebrew
• Xcode
Set up Homebrew:
brew update
brew upgrade
brew install boost --c++11 # this takes a while

brew install cmake cryptopp gmp jsoncpp
Ubuntu Trusty (14.04)
Below are the instructions to install the minimal dependencies required to compile Solidity on Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty
Tahr).
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential git cmake libgmp-dev libboost-all-dev \
libjsoncpp-dev
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum-dev
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade # this will update cmake to version 3.x
sudo apt-get -y install libcryptopp-dev libjsoncpp-dev
5.2. Installing Solidity 17

Ubuntu Xenial (16.04)
Below are the instructions to install the minimal dependencies required to compile Solidity on Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial
Xerus).
One of the dependencies (Crypto++ Library, with version >= 5.6.2) can be installed either by adding the Ethereum
PPA (Option 1) or by backporting libcrypto++ from Ubuntu Development to Ubuntu Xenial (Option 2).
sudo apt-get -y install build-essential git cmake libgmp-dev libboost-all-dev \
libjsoncpp-dev
# (Option 1) For those willing to add the Ethereum PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum-dev
sudo apt-get -y update
sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y install libcryptopp-dev
## (Option 2) For those willing to backport libcrypto++:

#sudo apt-get -y install ubuntu-dev-tools
#sudo pbuilder create
#mkdir ubuntu
#cd ubuntu
#backportpackage --workdir=. --build --dont-sign libcrypto++
#sudo dpkg -i buildresult/libcrypto++6_*.deb buildresult/libcrypto++-dev_*.deb
#cd ..
Building
Run this if you plan on installing Solidity only:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/ethereum/solidity.git
cd solidity
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. && make
If you want to help developing Solidity, you should fork Solidity and add your personal fork as a second remote:
cd solidity
git remote add personal git@github.com:username/solidity.git
5.3 Solidity by Example
5.3.1 Voting
The following contract is quite complex, but showcases a lot of Solidity’s features. It implements a voting contract. Of
course, the main problems of electronic voting is how to assign voting rights to the correct persons and how to prevent
manipulation. We will not solve all problems here, but at least we will show how delegated voting can be done so that
vote counting is automatic and completely transparent at the same time.
The idea is to create one contract per ballot, providing a short name for each option. Then the creator of the contract
who serves as chairperson will give the right to vote to each address individually.
The persons behind the addresses can then choose to either vote themselves or to delegate their vote to a person they
trust.
At the end of the voting time, winningProposal() will return the proposal with the largest number of votes.
/// @title V oting with delegation.

contract Ballot {
// This declares a new complex type which will
// be used for variables later.
// It will represent a single voter.
struct Voter {
uint weight; // weight is accumulated by delegation
bool voted; // if true, that person already voted
address delegate; // person delegated to
uint vote; // index of the voted proposal
}
// This is a type for a single proposal.

struct Proposal
{
bytes32 name; // short name (up to 32 bytes)
uint voteCount; // number of accumulated votes
}
address public chairperson;
// This declares a state variable that

// stores a `Voter` struct for each possible address.
mapping(address => Voter) public voters;
// A dynamically-sized array of `Proposal` structs.

Proposal[] public proposals;
/// Create a new ballot to choose one of `proposalN ames`.

function Ballot(bytes32[] proposalNames) {
chairperson = msg.sender;
voters[chairperson].weight = 1;
// For each of the provided proposal names,

// create a new proposal object and add it
// to the end of the array.
for (uint i = 0; i < proposalNames.length; i++) {
// `Proposal({...})` creates a temporary
// Proposal object and `proposals.push(...)`
// appends it to the end of `proposals`.
proposals.push(Proposal({
name: proposalNames[i],
voteCount: 0
}));
}
}
// Give `voter` the right to vote on this ballot.

// May only be called by `chairperson`.
function giveRightToVote(address voter) {
if (msg.sender != chairperson || voters[voter].voted) {
// `throw` terminates and reverts all changes to
// the state and to Ether balances. It is often
// a good idea to use this if functions are
// called incorrectly. But watch out, this
// will also consume all provided gas.
throw;
5.3. Solidity by Example 19

}
voters[voter].weight = 1;
}
/// Delegate your vote to the voter `to`.

function delegate(address to) {
// assigns reference
Voter sender = voters[msg.sender];
if (sender.voted)
throw;
// Forward the delegation as long as

// `to` also delegated.
// In general, such loops are very dangerous,
// because if they run too long, they might
// need more gas than is available in a block.
// In this case, the delegation will not be executed,
// but in other situations, such loops might
// cause a contract to get "stuck" completely.
while (
voters[to].delegate != address(0) &&
voters[to].delegate != msg.sender
) {
to = voters[to].delegate;
}
// We found a loop in the delegation, not allowed.

if (to == msg.sender) {
throw;
}
// Since `sender` is a reference, this

// modifies `voters[msg.sender].voted`
sender.voted = true;
sender.delegate = to;
Voter delegate = voters[to];
if (delegate.voted) {
// If the delegate already voted,
// directly add to the number of votes
proposals[delegate.vote].voteCount += sender.weight;
}
else {
// If the delegate did not vote yet,
// add to her weight.
delegate.weight += sender.weight;
}
}
/// Give your vote (including votes delegated to you)

/// to proposal `proposals[proposal].name`.
function vote(uint proposal) {
Voter sender = voters[msg.sender];
if (sender.voted)
throw;
sender.voted = true;
sender.vote = proposal;
// If `proposal` is out of the range of the array,
// this will throw automatically and revert all

// changes.
proposals[proposal].voteCount += sender.weight;
}
/// @dev Computes the winning proposal taking all

/// previous votes into account.
function winningProposal() constant
returns (uint winningProposal)
{
uint winningVoteCount = 0;
for (uint p = 0; p < proposals.length; p++) {
if (proposals[p].voteCount > winningVoteCount) {
winningVoteCount = proposals[p].voteCount;
winningProposal = p;
}
}
}
}
Possible Improvements
Currently, many transactions are needed to assign the rights to vote to all participants. Can you think of a better way?
5.3.2 Blind Auction
In this section, we will show how easy it is to create a completely blind auction contract on Ethereum. We will start
with an open auction where everyone can see the bids that are made and then extend this contract into a blind auction
where it is not possible to see the actual bid until the bidding period ends.
Simple Open Auction
The general idea of the following simple auction contract is that everyone can send their bids during a bidding period.
The bids already include sending money / ether in order to bind the bidders to their bid. If the highest bid is raised,
the previously highest bidder gets her money back. After the end of the bidding period, the contract has to be called
manually for the beneficiary to receive his money - contracts cannot activate themselves.
contract SimpleAuction {
// Parameters of the auction. Times are either
// absolute unix timestamps (seconds since 1970-01-01)
// or time periods in seconds.
address public beneficiary;
uint public auctionStart;
uint public biddingTime;
// Current state of the auction.

address public highestBidder;
uint public highestBid;
// Allowed withdrawals of previous bids

mapping(address => uint) pendingReturns;
// Set to true at the end, disallows any change

bool ended;

// Events that will be fired on changes.

event HighestBidIncreased(address bidder, uint amount);
event AuctionEnded(address winner, uint amount);
// The following is a so-called natspec comment,

// recognizable by the three slashes.
// It will be shown when the user is asked to
// confirm a transaction.
/// Create a simple auction with `_biddingTime`

/// seconds bidding time on behalf of the
/// beneficiary address `_beneficiary`.
function SimpleAuction(
uint _biddingTime,
address _beneficiary
) {
beneficiary = _beneficiary;
auctionStart = now;
biddingTime = _biddingTime;
}
/// Bid on the auction with the value sent

/// together with this transaction.
/// The value will only be refunded if the
/// auction is not won.
function bid() {
// No arguments are necessary, all
// information is already part of
// the transaction.
if (now > auctionStart + biddingTime) {
// Revert the call if the bidding
// period is over.
throw;
}
if (msg.value <= highestBid) {
// If the bid is not higher, send the
// money back.
throw;
}
if (highestBidder != 0) {
// Sending back the money by simply using
// highestBidder.send(highestBid) is a security risk
// because it can be prevented by the caller by e.g.
// raising the call stack to 1023. It is always safer
// to let the recipient withdraw their money themselves.
pendingReturns[highestBidder] += highestBid;
}
highestBidder = msg.sender;
highestBid = msg.value;
HighestBidIncreased(msg.sender, msg.value);
}
/// W ithdraw a bid that was overbid.

function withdraw() {
var amount = pendingReturns[msg.sender];
// It is important to set this to zero because the recipient
// can call this function again as part of the receiving call
// before `send` returns.
pendingReturns[msg.sender] = 0;
if (!msg.sender.send(amount))
throw; // If anything fails, this will revert the changes above
}
/// End the auction and send the highest bid

/// to the beneficiary.
function auctionEnd() {
// It is a good guideline to structure functions that interact
// with other contracts (i.e. they call functions or send Ether)
// into three phases:
// 1. checking conditions
// 2. performing actions (potentially changing conditions)
// 3. interacting with other contracts
// If these phases are mixed up, the other contract could call
// back into the current contract and modify the state or cause
// effects (ether payout) to be perfromed multiple times.
// If functions called internally include interaction with external
// contracts, they also have to be considered interaction with
// external contracts.
// 1. Conditions
if (now <= auctionStart + biddingTime)
throw; // auction did not yet end
if (ended)
throw; // this function has already been called
// 2. Effects
ended = true;
AuctionEnded(highestBidder, highestBid);
// 3. Interaction
if (!beneficiary.send(highestBid))
throw;
}
function () {
// This function gets executed if a
// transaction with invalid data is sent to
// the contract or just ether without data.
// We revert the send so that no-one
// accidentally loses money when using the
// contract.
throw;
}
}
Blind Auction
The previous open auction is extended to a blind auction in the following. The advantage of a blind auction is that
there is no time pressure towards the end of the bidding period. Creating a blind auction on a transparent computing
platform might sound like a contradiction, but cryptography comes to the rescue.
During the bidding period, a bidder does not actually send her bid, but only a hashed version of it. Since it is
currently considered practically impossible to find two (sufficiently long) values whose hash values are equal, the
bidder commits to the bid by that. After the end of the bidding period, the bidders have to reveal their bids: They send
their values unencrypted and the contract checks that the hash value is the same as the one provided during the bidding

period.
Another challenge is how to make the auction binding and blind at the same time: The only way to prevent the bidder
from just not sending the money after he won the auction is to make her send it together with the bid. Since value
transfers cannot be blinded in Ethereum, anyone can see the value.
The following contract solves this problem by accepting any value that is at least as large as the bid. Since this can of
course only be checked during the reveal phase, some bids might be invalid, and this is on purpose (it even provides
an explicit flag to place invalid bids with high value transfers): Bidders can confuse competition by placing several
high or low invalid bids.
contract BlindAuction {
struct Bid {
bytes32 blindedBid;
uint deposit;
}
address public beneficiary;

uint public auctionStart;
uint public biddingEnd;
uint public revealEnd;
bool public ended;
mapping(address => Bid[]) public bids;
address public highestBidder;

uint public highestBid;
// Allowed withdrawals of previous bids

mapping(address => uint) pendingReturns;
event AuctionEnded(address winner, uint highestBid);
/// M odifiers are a convenient way to validate inputs to

/// functions. ònlyBefore` is applied to `bid` below:
/// The new function body is the modifier's body where
/// `_` is replaced by the old function body.
modifier onlyBefore(uint _time) { if (now >= _time) throw; _ }
modifier onlyAfter(uint _time) { if (now <= _time) throw; _ }
function BlindAuction(
uint _biddingTime,
uint _revealTime,
address _beneficiary
) {
beneficiary = _beneficiary;
auctionStart = now;
biddingEnd = now + _biddingTime;
revealEnd = biddingEnd + _revealTime;
}
/// Place a blinded bid with `_blindedBid` = sha3(value,

/// fake, secret).
/// The sent ether is only refunded if the bid is correctly
/// revealed in the revealing phase. The bid is valid if the
/// ether sent together with the bid is at least "value" and
/// "fake" is not true. Setting "fake" to true and sending
/// not the exact amount are ways to hide the real bid but
/// still make the required deposit. The same address can
/// place multiple bids.

function bid(bytes32 _blindedBid)
onlyBefore(biddingEnd)
{
bids[msg.sender].push(Bid({
blindedBid: _blindedBid,
deposit: msg.value
}));
}
/// Reveal your blinded bids. You will get a refund for all
/// correctly blinded invalid bids and for all bids except for
/// the totally highest.
function reveal(
uint[] _values,
bool[] _fake,
bytes32[] _secret
)
onlyAfter(biddingEnd)
onlyBefore(revealEnd)
{
uint length = bids[msg.sender].length;
if (
_values.length != length ||
_fake.length != length ||
_secret.length != length
) {
throw;
}
uint refund;
for (uint i = 0; i < length; i++) {
var bid = bids[msg.sender][i];
var (value, fake, secret) =
(_values[i], _fake[i], _secret[i]);
if (bid.blindedBid != sha3(value, fake, secret)) {
// Bid was not actually revealed.
// Do not refund deposit.
continue;
}
refund += bid.deposit;
if (!fake && bid.deposit >= value) {
if (placeBid(msg.sender, value))
refund -= value;
}
// Make it impossible for the sender to re-claim
// the same deposit.
bid.blindedBid = 0;
}
if (!msg.sender.send(refund))
throw;
}
// This is an "internal" function which means that it

// can only be called from the contract itself (or from
// derived contracts).
function placeBid(address bidder, uint value) internal
returns (bool success)

{
if (value <= highestBid) {
return false;
}
if (highestBidder != 0) {
// Refund the previously highest bidder.
pendingReturns[highestBidder] += highestBid;
}
highestBid = value;
highestBidder = bidder;
return true;
}
/// W ithdraw a bid that was overbid.

var amount = pendingReturns[msg.sender];
// It is important to set this to zero because the recipient
// can call this function again as part of the receiving call
// before `send` returns (see the remark above about
// conditions -> effects -> interaction).
pendingReturns[msg.sender] = 0;
if (!msg.sender.send(amount))
throw; // If anything fails, this will revert the changes above
}
/// End the auction and send the highest bid

/// to the beneficiary.
function auctionEnd()
onlyAfter(revealEnd)
{
if (ended)
throw;
AuctionEnded(highestBidder, highestBid);
ended = true;
// We send all the money we have, because some
// of the refunds might have failed.
if (!beneficiary.send(this.balance))
throw;
}
function () {
throw;
}
}
5.3.3 Safe Remote Purchase

contract Purchase {
uint public value;
address public seller;
address public buyer;
enum State { Created, Locked, Inactive }
State public state;
function Purchase() {
seller = msg.sender;
value = msg.value / 2;
if (2 * value != msg.value) throw;

}
modifier require(bool _condition) {

if (!_condition) throw;
_
}
modifier onlyBuyer() {
if (msg.sender != buyer) throw;
_
}
modifier onlySeller() {
if (msg.sender != seller) throw;
_
}
modifier inState(State _state) {

if (state != _state) throw;
_
}
event aborted();
event purchaseConfirmed();
event itemReceived();
/// Abort the purchase and reclaim the ether.

/// Can only be called by the seller before
/// the contract is locked.
function abort()
onlySeller
inState(State.Created)
{
aborted();
state = State.Inactive;
if (!seller.send(this.balance))
throw;
}
/// Confirm the purchase as buyer.

/// Transaction has to include `2 * value` ether.
/// The ether will be locked until confirmReceived
/// is called.
function confirmPurchase()
inState(State.Created)
require(msg.value == 2 * value)
{
purchaseConfirmed();
buyer = msg.sender;
state = State.Locked;
}
/// Confirm that you (the buyer) received the item.

/// This will release the locked ether.
function confirmReceived()
onlyBuyer
inState(State.Locked)

{
itemReceived();
// It is important to change the state first because
// otherwise, the contracts called using `send` below
// can call in again here.
state = State.Inactive;
// This actually allows both the buyer and the seller to
// block the refund.
if (!buyer.send(value) || !seller.send(this.balance))
throw;
}
function() {
throw;
}
}
5.3.4 Micropayment Channel
To be written.
5.4 Solidity in Depth
This section should provide you with all you need to know about Solidity. If something is missing here, please contact
us on Gitter or make a pull request on Github.
5.4.1 Layout of a Solidity Source File
Source files can contain an arbitrary number of contract definitions and include directives.
Importing other Source Files
Syntax and Semantics
Solidity supports import statements that are very similar to those available in JavaScript (from ES6 on), although
Solidity does not know the concept of a “default export”.
At a global level, you can use import statements of the following form:
import "filename";
This statement imports all global symbols from “filename” (and symbols imported there) into the current global scope
(different than in ES6 but backwards-compatible for Solidity).
import * as symbolName from "filename";
...creates a new global symbol symbolName whose members are all the global symbols from "filename".
import {symbol1 as alias, symbol2} from "filename";
...creates new global symbols alias and symbol2 which reference symbol1 and symbol2 from "filename",
respectively.
Another syntax is not part of ES6, but probably convenient:

import "filename" as symbolName;
which is equivalent to import * as symbolName from "filename";.
Paths
In the above, filename is always treated as a path with / as directory separator, . as the current and .. as the
parent directory. Path names that do not start with . are treated as absolute paths.
To import a file x from the same directory as the current file, use import "./x" as x;. If you use import
"x" as x; instead, a different file could be referenced (in a global “include directory”).
It depends on the compiler (see below) how to actually resolve the paths. In general, the directory hierarchy does not
need to strictly map onto your local filesystem, it can also map to resources discovered via e.g. ipfs, http or git.
Use in actual Compilers
When the compiler is invoked, it is not only possible to specify how to discover the first element of a path, but it
is possible to specify path prefix remappings so that e.g. github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/library is
remapped to /usr/local/dapp-bin/library and the compiler will read the files from there. If remapping
keys are prefixes of each other, the longest is tried first. This allows for a “fallback-remapping” with e.g. "" maps to
"/usr/local/include/solidity". Furthermore, these remappings can depend on the context, which allows
you to configure packages to import e.g. different versions of a library of the same name.
solc:
For solc (the commandline compiler), these remappings are provided as context:prefix=target arguments,
where both the context: and the =target parts are optional (where target defaults to prefix in that case). All
remapping values that are regular files are compiled (including their dependencies). This mechanism is completely
backwards-compatible (as long as no filename contains = or :) and thus not a breaking change. All imports in files in
or below the directory context that import a file that starts with prefix are redirected by replacing prefix by
target.
So as an example, if you clone github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/ locally to /usr/local/dapp-bin,
you can use the following in your source file:
import "github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/library/iterable_mapping.sol" as it_mapping;
and then run the compiler as

solc github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/=/usr/local/dapp-bin/ source.sol
As a more complex example, suppose you rely on some module that uses a very old version of dapp-bin. That old
version of dapp-bin is checked out at /usr/local/dapp-bin_old, then you can use
solc module1:github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/=/usr/local/dapp-bin/ \
module2:github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/=/usr/local/dapp-bin_old/ \
source.sol
so that all imports in module2 point to the old version but imports in module1 get the new version.
Note that solc only allows you to include files from certain directories: They have to be in the directory (or subdirec-
tory) of one of the explicitly specified source files or in the directory (or subdirectory) of a remapping target. If you
want to allow direct absolute includes, just add the remapping =/.
If there are multiple remappings that lead to a valid file, the remapping with the longest common prefix is chosen.
5.4. Solidity in Depth 29

browser-solidity:
The browser-based compiler provides an automatic remapping for github and will also automati-
cally retrieve the file over the network: You can import the iterable mapping by e.g. import
"github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/library/iterable_mapping.sol" as it_mapping;.
Other source code providers may be added in the future.
Comments
Single-line comments (//) and multi-line comments (/*...*/) are possible.

// This is a single-line comment.
/*
This is a
multi-line comment.
*/
Additionally, there is another type of comment called a natspec comment, for which the documentation is not yet
written. They are written with a triple slash (///) or a double asterisk block(/** ... */) and they should be
used directly above function declarations or statements. You can use Doxygen-style tags inside these comments to
document functions, annotate conditions for formal verification, and provide a confirmation text which is shown to
users when they attempt to invoke a function.
In the following example we document the title of the contract, the explanation for the two input parameters and two
returned values.
/** @title Shape calculator.*/

contract shapeCalculator{
/**@dev Calculates a rectangle's surface and perimeter.
* @param w W idth of the rectangle.
* @param h Height of the rectangle.
* @return s The calculated surface.
* @return p The calculated perimeter.
*/
function rectangle(uint w, uint h) returns (uint s, uint p){
s = w*h;
p = 2*(w+h);
}
}
5.4.2 Structure of a Contract
Contracts in Solidity are similar to classes in object-oriented languages. Each contract can contain declarations of
State Variables, Functions, Function Modifiers, Events, Structs Types and Enum Types. Furthermore, contracts can
inherit from other contracts.
State Variables
State variables are values which are permanently stored in contract storage.
contract SimpleStorage {
uint storedData; // State variable
// ...
}
See the Types section for valid state variable types and Visibility and Accessors for possible choices for visibility.
Functions
Functions are the executable units of code within a contract.

function bid() { // Function
// ...
}
}
Function Calls can happen internally or externally and have different levels of visibility (Visibility and Accessors)
towards other contracts.
Function Modifiers
Function modifiers can be used to amend the semantics of functions in a declarative way (see Function Modifiers in
contracts section).
contract Purchase {
address public seller;
modifier onlySeller() { // Modifier

if (msg.sender != seller) throw;
_
}
function abort() onlySeller { // Modifier usage

// ...
}
}
Events
Events are convenience interfaces with the EVM logging facilities.

event HighestBidIncreased(address bidder, uint amount); // Event
function bid() {
// ...
HighestBidIncreased(msg.sender, msg.value); // Triggering event
}
}
See Events in contracts section for information on how events are declared and can be used from within a dapp.
Structs Types
Structs are custom defined types that can group several variables (see Structs in types section).

contract Ballot {
struct Voter { // Struct
uint weight;
bool voted;
address delegate;
uint vote;
}
}
Enum Types
Enums can be used to create custom types with a finite set of values (see Enums in types section).
contract Purchase {
enum State { Created, Locked, Inactive } // Enum
}
5.4.3 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(sha3("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 operators 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.

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,
// ùint16` will be used and so on.
function getChoice() returns (ActionChoices) {
return choice;
}
function getDefaultChoice() returns (uint) {

return uint(defaultChoice);
}
}
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.
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!
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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) {

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;
if (!c.beneficiary.send(c.amount))
throw;
c.amount = 0;
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 sha3 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).
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.
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, a
// 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:
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 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++) { ... }
5.4.4 Units and Globally Available Variables
Ether Units
A literal number can take a suffix of wei, finney, szabo or ether to convert between the subdenominations of
Ether, where Ether currency numbers without a postfix are assumed to be Wei, e.g. 2 ether == 2000 finney
evaluates to true.
Time Units
Suffixes like seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and years after literal numbers can be used to convert
between units of time where seconds are the base unit and units are considered naively in the following way:
• 1 == 1 second
• 1 minutes == 60 seconds
• 1 hours == 60 minutes
• 1 days == 24 hours
• 1 weeks = 7 days
• 1 years = 365 days
Take care if you perform calendar calculations using these units, because not every year equals 365 days and not
even every day has 24 hours because of leap seconds. Due to the fact that leap seconds cannot be predicted, an exact
calendar library has to be updated by an external oracle.
These suffixes cannot be applied to variables. If you want to interpret some input variable in e.g. days, you can do it
in the following way:
function f(uint start, uint daysAfter) {
if (now >= start + daysAfter * 1 days) { ... }
}
Special Variables and Functions
There are special variables and functions which always exist in the global namespace and are mainly used to provide
information about the blockchain.
Block and Transaction Properties
• block.blockhash(uint blockNumber) returns (bytes32): hash of the given block - only

works for 256 most recent blocks
• block.coinbase (address): current block miner’s address
• block.difficulty (uint): current block difficulty
• block.gaslimit (uint): current block gaslimit
• block.number (uint): current block number
• block.timestamp (uint): current block timestamp
• msg.data (bytes): complete calldata
• msg.gas (uint): remaining gas
• msg.sender (address): sender of the message (current call)
• msg.sig (bytes4): first four bytes of the calldata (i.e. function identifier)
• msg.value (uint): number of wei sent with the message
• now (uint): current block timestamp (alias for block.timestamp)
• tx.gasprice (uint): gas price of the transaction
• tx.origin (address): sender of the transaction (full call chain)
Note: The values of all members of msg, including msg.sender and msg.value can change for every external
function call. This includes calls to library functions.
If you want to implement access restrictions in library functions using msg.sender, you have to manually supply
the value of msg.sender as an argument.

Note: The block hashes are not available for all blocks for scalability reasons. You can only access the hashes of the
most recent 256 blocks, all other values will be zero.
Mathematical and Cryptographic Functions
addmod(uint x, uint y, uint k) returns (uint): compute (x + y) % k where the addition is

performed with arbitrary precision and does not wrap around at 2**256.
mulmod(uint x, uint y, uint k) returns (uint): compute (x * y) % k where the multiplica-
tion is performed with arbitrary precision and does not wrap around at 2**256.
sha3(...) returns (bytes32): compute the Ethereum-SHA-3 (KECCAK-256) hash of the (tightly
packed) arguments
sha256(...) returns (bytes32): compute the SHA-256 hash of the (tightly packed) arguments
ripemd160(...) returns (bytes20): compute RIPEMD-160 hash of the (tightly packed) arguments
ecrecover(bytes32 hash, uint8 v, bytes32 r, bytes32 s) returns (address):
recover the address associated with the public key from elliptic curve signature or return zero on error
In the above, “tightly packed” means that the arguments are concatenated without padding. This means that the
following are all identical:
sha3("ab", "c")
sha3("abc")
sha3(0x616263)
sha3(6382179)
sha3(97, 98, 99)
If padding is needed, explicit type conversions can be used: sha3("\x00\x12") is the same as
sha3(uint16(0x12)).
It might be that you run into Out-of-Gas for sha256, ripemd160 or ecrecover on a private blockchain. The
reason for this is that those are implemented as so-called precompiled contracts and these contracts only really exist
after they received the first message (although their contract code is hardcoded). Messages to non-existing contracts
are more expensive and thus the execution runs into an Out-of-Gas error. A workaround for this problem is to first
send e.g. 1 Wei to each of the contracts before you use them in your actual contracts. This is not an issue on the official
or test net.
Address Related
<address>.balance (uint256): balance of the Address in Wei

<address>.send(uint256 amount) returns (bool): send given amount of Wei to Address, returns
false on failure
For more information, see the section on Address.
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.
Contract Related
this (current contract’s type): the current contract, explicitly convertible to Address
selfdestruct(address recipient): destroy the current contract, sending its funds to the given Address
Furthermore, all functions of the current contract are callable directly including the current function.
5.4.5 Expressions and Control Structures
Control Structures
Most of the control structures from C/JavaScript are available in Solidity except for switch and goto. So there is:
if, else, while, for, break, continue, return, ? :, with the usual semantics known from C or JavaScript.
Parentheses can not be omitted for conditionals, but curly brances can be omitted around single-statement bodies.
Note that there is no type conversion from non-boolean to boolean types as there is in C and JavaScript, so if (1)
{ ... } is not valid Solidity.
Function Calls
Internal Function Calls
Functions of the current contract can be called directly (“internally”), also recursively, as seen in this nonsensical
example:
contract C {
function g(uint a) returns (uint ret) { return f(); }
function f() returns (uint ret) { return g(7) + f(); }
}
These function calls are translated into simple jumps inside the EVM. This has the effect that the current memory is
not cleared, i.e. passing memory references to internally-called functions is very efficient. Only functions of the same
contract can be called internally.
External Function Calls
The expression this.g(8); is also a valid function call, but this time, the function will be called “externally”, via a
message call and not directly via jumps. Functions of other contracts have to be called externally. For an external call,
all function arguments have to be copied to memory.
When calling functions of other contracts, the amount of Wei sent with the call and the gas can be specified:
contract InfoFeed {
function info() returns (uint ret) { return 42; }
}
contract Consumer {
InfoFeed feed;
function setFeed(address addr) { feed = InfoFeed(addr); }
function callFeed() { feed.info.value(10).gas(800)(); }
}

Note that the expression InfoFeed(addr) performs an explicit type conversion stating that “we know that the
type of the contract at the given address is InfoFeed” and this does not execute a constructor. We could also have
used function setFeed(InfoFeed _feed) { feed = _feed; } directly. Be careful about the fact
that feed.info.value(10).gas(800) only (locally) sets the value and amount of gas sent with the function
call and only the parentheses at the end perform the actual call.
Function calls cause exceptions if the called contract does not exist (in the sense that the account does not contain
code) or if the called contract itself throws an exception or goes out of gas.
Warning: Any interaction with another contract imposes a potential danger, especially if the source code of
the contract is not known in advance. The current contract hands over control to the called contract and that
may potentially do just about anything. Even if the called contract inherits from a known parent contract, the
inheriting contract is only required to have a correct interface. The implementation of the contract, however, can
be completely arbitrary and thus, pose a danger. In addition, be prepared in case it calls into other contracts of your
system or even back into the calling contract before the first call returns. This means that the called contract can
change state variables of the calling contract via its functions. Write your functions in a way that, for example, calls
to external functions happen after any changes to state variables in your contract so your contract is not vulnerable
to a reentrancy exploit.
Named Calls and Anonymous Function Parameters
Function call arguments can also be given by name, in any order, if they are enclosed in { } as can be seen in the
following example. The argument list has to coincide by name with the list of parameters from the function declaration,
but can be in arbitrary order.
contract C {
function f(uint key, uint value) { ... }
function g() {
// named arguments
f({value: 2, key: 3});
}
}
Omitted Function Parameter Names
The names of unused parameters (especially return parameters) can be omitted. Those names will still be present on
the stack, but they are inaccessible.
contract C {
// omitted name for parameter
function func(uint k, uint) returns(uint) {
return k;
}
}
Creating Contracts via new
A contract can create a new contract using the new keyword. The full code of the contract to be created has to be
known and thus recursive creation-dependencies are now possible.
contract D {
uint x;
function D(uint a) {
x = a;
}
}
contract C {
D d = new D(4); // will be executed as part of C's constructor
function createD(uint arg) {

D newD = new D(arg);
}
function createAndEndowD(uint arg, uint amount) {

// Send ether along with the creation
D newD = (new D).value(amount)(arg);
}
}
As seen in the example, it is possible to forward Ether to the creation, but it is not possible to limit the amount of gas.
If the creation fails (due to out-of-stack, not enough balance or other problems), an exception is thrown.
Order of Evaluation of Expressions
The evaluation order of expressions is not specified (more formally, the order in which the children of one node in
the expression tree are evaluated is not specified, but they are of course evaluated before the node itself). It is only
guaranteed that statements are executed in order and short-circuiting for boolean expressions is done. See Order of
Precedence of Operators for more information.
Assignment
Destructuring Assignments and Returning Multiple Values
Solidity internally allows tuple types, i.e. a list of objects of potentially different types whose size is a constant at
compile-time. Those tuples can be used to return multiple values at the same time and also assign them to multiple
variables (or LValues in general) at the same time:
contract C {
uint[] data;
function f() returns (uint, bool, uint) {

return (7, true, 2);
}
function g() {
// Declares and assigns the variables. Specifying the type explicitly is not possible.
var (x, b, y) = f();
// Assigns to a pre-existing variable.
(x, y) = (2, 7);
// Common trick to swap values -- does not work for non-value storage types.
(x, y) = (y, x);
// Components can be left out (also for variable declarations).
// If the tuple ends in an empty component,
// the rest of the values are discarded.
(data.length,) = f(); // Sets the length to 7

// The same can be done on the left side.

(,data[3]) = f(); // Sets data[3] to 2
// Components can only be left out at the left-hand-side of assignments, with
// one exception:
(x,) = (1,);
// (1,) is the only way to specify a 1-component tuple, because (1) is
// equivalent to 1.
}
}
Complications for Arrays and Structs
The semantics of assignment are a bit more complicated for non-value types like arrays and structs. Assigning to a state
variable always creates an independent copy. On the other hand, assigning to a local variable creates an independent
copy only for elementary types, i.e. static types that fit into 32 bytes. If structs or arrays (including bytes and
string) are assigned from a state variable to a local variable, the local variable holds a reference to the original
state variable. A second assignment to the local variable does not modify the state but only changes the reference.
Assignments to members (or elements) of the local variable do change the state.
Scoping and Declarations
A variable which is declared will have an initial default value whose byte-representation is all zeros. The “default
values” of variables are the typical “zero-state” of whatever the type is. For example, the default value for a bool
is false. The default value for the uint or int types is 0. For statically-sized arrays and bytes1 to bytes32,
each individual element will be initialized to the default value corresponding to its type. Finally, for dynamically-sized
arrays, bytes and string, the default value is an empty array or string.
A variable declared anywhere within a function will be in scope for the entire function, regardless of where it is de-
clared. This happens because Solidity inherits its scoping rules from JavaScript. This is in contrast to many languages
where variables are only scoped where they are declared until the end of the semantic block. As a result, the following
code is illegal and cause the compiler to throw an error, Identifier already declared:
contract ScopingErrors {
function scoping() {
uint i = 0;
while (i++ < 1) {

uint same1 = 0;
}
while (i++ < 2) {

uint same1 = 0;// Illegal, second declaration of same1
}
}
function minimalScoping() {
{
uint same2 = 0;
}
{
uint same2 = 0;// Illegal, second declaration of same2
}
}
function forLoopScoping() {
for (uint same3 = 0; same3 < 1; same3++) {
}
for (uint same3 = 0; same3 < 1; same3++) {// Illegal, second declaration of same3
}
}
}
In addition to this, if a variable is declared, it will be initialized at the beginning of the function to its default value. As
a result, the following code is legal, despite being poorly written:
function foo() returns (uint) {
// baz is implicitly initialized as 0
uint bar = 5;
if (true) {
bar += baz;
}
else {
uint baz = 10;// never executes
}
return bar;// returns 5
}
Exceptions
There are some cases where exceptions are thrown automatically (see below). You can use the throw instruction to
throw an exception manually. The effect of an exception is that the currently executing call is stopped and reverted (i.e.
all changes to the state and balances are undone) and the exception is also “bubbled up” through Solidity function calls
(exceptions are send and the low-level functions call, delegatecall and callcode, those return false in
case of an exception).
Catching exceptions is not yet possible.
In the following example, we show how throw can be used to easily revert an Ether transfer and also how to check
the return value of send:
contract Sharer {
function sendHalf(address addr) returns (uint balance) {
if (!addr.send(msg.value / 2))
throw; // also reverts the transfer to Sharer
return this.balance;
}
}
Currently, there are six situations, where exceptions happen automatically in Solidity:
1. If you access an array beyond its length (i.e. x[i] where i >= x.length).
2. If a function called via a message call does not finish properly (i.e. it runs out of gas or throws an exception
itself).
3. If a non-existent function on a library is called or Ether is sent to a library.
4. If you divide or modulo by zero (e.g. 5 / 0 or 23 % 0).
5. If you perform an external function call targeting a contract that contains no code.
6. If a contract-creation call using the new keyword fails.

Internally, Solidity performs an “invalid jump” when an exception is thrown and thus causes the EVM to revert all
changes made to the state. The reason for this is that there is no safe way to continue execution, because an expected
effect did not occur. Because we want to retain the atomicity of transactions, the safest thing to do is to revert all
changes and make the whole transaction (or at least call) without effect.
Inline Assembly
For more fine-grained control especially in order to enhance the language by writing libraries, it is possible to interleave
Solidity statements with inline assembly in a language close to the one of the virtual machine. Due to the fact that
the EVM is a stack machine, it is often hard to address the correct stack slot and provide arguments to opcodes at
the correct point on the stack. Solidity’s inline assembly tries to facilitate that and other issues arising when writing
manual assembly by the following features:
• functional-style opcodes: mul(1, add(2, 3)) instead of push1 3 push1 2 add push1 1 mul
• assembly-local variables: let x := add(2, 3) let y := mload(0x40) x := add(x, y)
• access to external variables: function f(uint x) { assembly { x := sub(x, 1) } }
• labels: let x := 10 repeat: x := sub(x, 1) jumpi(repeat, eq(x, 0))
We now want to describe the inline assembly language in detail.
Warning: Inline assembly is still a relatively new feature and might change if it does not prove useful, so please
try to keep up to date.
Example
The following example provides library code to access the code of another contract and load it into a bytes variable.
This is not possible at all with “plain Solidity” and the idea is that assembly libraries will be used to enhance the
language in such ways.
library GetCode {
function at(address _addr) returns (bytes o_code) {
assembly {
// retrieve the size of the code, this needs assembly
let size := extcodesize(_addr)
// allocate output byte array - this could also be done without assembly
// by using o_code = new bytes(size)
o_code := mload(0x40)
// new "memory end" including padding
mstore(0x40, add(o_code, and(add(add(size, 0x20), 0x1f), not(0x1f))))
// store length in memory
mstore(o_code, size)
// actually retrieve the code, this needs assembly
extcodecopy(_addr, add(o_code, 0x20), 0, size)
}
}
}
Inline assembly could also be beneficial in cases where the optimizer fails to produce efficient code. Please be aware
that assembly is much more difficult to write because the compiler does not perform checks, so you should use it for
complex things only if you really know what you are doing.
library VectorSum {
// This function is less efficient because the optimizer currently fails to
// remove the bounds checks in array access.

function sumSolidity(uint[] _data) returns (uint o_sum) {
for (uint i = 0; i < _data.length; ++i)
o_sum += _data[i];
}
// We know that we only access the array in bounds, so we can avoid the check.
// 0x20 needs to be added to an array because the first slot contains the
// array length.
function sumAsm(uint[] _data) returns (uint o_sum) {
for (uint i = 0; i < _data.length; ++i) {
assembly {
o_sum := mload(add(add(_data, 0x20), i))
}
}
}
}
Syntax
Inline assembly parses comments, literals and identifiers exactly as Solidity, so you can use the usual // and /* */
comments. Inline assembly is initiated by assembly { ... } and inside these curly braces, the following can
be used (see the later sections for more details)
• literals, e.g. 0x123, 42 or "abc" (strings up to 32 characters)
• opcodes (in “instruction style”), e.g. mload sload dup1 sstore, for a list see below
• opcodes in functional style, e.g. add(1, mlod(0))
• labels, e.g. name:
• variable declarations, e.g. let x := 7 or let x := add(y, 3)
• identifiers (externals, labels or assembly-local variables), e.g. jump(name), 3 x add
• assignments (in “instruction style”), e.g. 3 =: x
• assignments in functional style, e.g. x := add(y, 3)
• blocks where local variables are scoped inside, e.g. { let x := 3 { let y := add(x, 1) } }
Opcodes
This document does not want to be a full description of the Ethereum virtual machine, but the following list can be
used as a reference of its opcodes.
If an opcode takes arguments (always from the top of the stack), they are given in parentheses. Note that the order of
arguments can be seen as being reversed compared to the instructional style (explained below). Opcodes marked with
- do not push an item onto the stack, those marked with * are special and all others push exactly one item onte the
stack.
In the following, mem[a...b) signifies the bytes of memory starting at position a up to (excluding) position b and
storage[p] signifies the storage contents at position p.
The opcodes pushi and jumpdest cannot be used directly.
stop - stop execution, identical to return(0,0)

Table 5.1 – continued from previous page
add(x, y) x+y
sub(x, y) x-y
mul(x, y) x*y
div(x, y) x/y
sdiv(x, y) x / y, for signed numbers in two’s complement
mod(x, y) x%y
smod(x, y) x % y, for signed numbers in two’s complement
exp(x, y) x to the power of y
not(x) ~x, every bit of x is negated
lt(x, y) 1 if x < y, 0 otherwise
gt(x, y) 1 if x > y, 0 otherwise
slt(x, y) 1 if x < y, 0 otherwise, for signed numbers in two’s complement
sgt(x, y) 1 if x > y, 0 otherwise, for signed numbers in two’s complement
eq(x, y) 1 if x == y, 0 otherwise
iszero(x) 1 if x == 0, 0 otherwise
and(x, y) bitwise and of x and y
or(x, y) bitwise or of x and y
xor(x, y) bitwise xor of x and y
byte(n, x) nth byte of x, where the most significant byte is the 0th byte
addmod(x, y, m) (x + y) % m with arbitrary precision arithmetics
mulmod(x, y, m) (x * y) % m with arbitrary precision arithmetics
signextend(i, x) sign extend from (i*8+7)th bit counting from least significant
sha3(p, n) keccak(mem[p...(p+n)))
jump(label) - jump to label / code position
jumpi(label, cond) - jump to label if cond is nonzero
pc current position in code
pop * remove topmost stack slot
dup1 ... dup16 copy ith stack slot to the top (counting from top)
swap1 ... swap16 * swap topmost and ith stack slot below it
mload(p) mem[p..(p+32))
mstore(p, v) - mem[p..(p+32)) := v
mstore8(p, v) - mem[p] := v & 0xff - only modifies a single byte
sload(p) storage[p]
sstore(p, v) - storage[p] := v
msize size of memory, i.e. largest accessed memory index
gas gas still available to execution
address address of the current contract / execution context
balance(a) wei balance at address a
caller call sender (excluding delegatecall)
callvalue wei sent together with the current call
calldataload(p) call data starting from position p (32 bytes)
calldatasize size of call data in bytes
calldatacopy(t, f, s) - copy s bytes from calldata at position f to mem at position t
codesize size of the code of the current contract / execution context
codecopy(t, f, s) - copy s bytes from code at position f to mem at position t
extcodesize(a) size of the code at address a
extcodecopy(a, t, f, s) - like codecopy(t, f, s) but take code at address a
create(v, p, s) create new contract with code mem[p..(p+s)) and send v wei and return the new addre
Table 5.1 – continued from previous page

call(g, a, v, in, insize, out, outsize) call contract at address a with input mem[in..(in+insize)] providing g gas and v wei an
callcode(g, a, v, in, insize, out, outsize) identical to call but only use the code from a and stay in the context of the current con
delegatecall(g, a, in, insize, out, outsize) identical to callcode but also keep caller and callvalue
return(p, s) * end execution, return data mem[p..(p+s))
selfdestruct(a) * end execution, destroy current contract and send funds to a
log0(p, s) - log without topics and data mem[p..(p+s))
log1(p, s, t1) - log with topic t1 and data mem[p..(p+s))
log2(p, s, t1, t2) - log with topics t1, t2 and data mem[p..(p+s))
log3(p, s, t1, t2, t3) - log with topics t1, t2, t3 and data mem[p..(p+s))
log4(p, s, t1, t2, t3, t4) - log with topics t1, t2, t3, t4 and data mem[p..(p+s))
origin transaction sender
gasprice gas price of the transaction
blockhash(b) hash of block nr b - only for last 256 blocks excluding current
coinbase current mining beneficiary
timestamp timestamp of the current block in seconds since the epoch
number current block number
difficulty difficulty of the current block
gaslimit block gas limit of the current block
Literals
You can use integer constants by typing them in decimal or hexadecimal notation and an appropriate PUSHi instruction
will automatically be generated. The following creates code to add 2 and 3 resulting in 5 and then computes the bitwise
and with the string “abc”. Strings are stored left-aligned and cannot be longer than 32 bytes.
assembly { 2 3 add "abc" and }
Functional Style
You can type opcode after opcode in the same way they will end up in bytecode. For example adding 3 to the contents
in memory at position 0x80 would be
3 0x80 mload add 0x80 mstore
As it is often hard to see what the actual arguments for certain opcodes are, Solidity inline assembly also provides a
“functional style” notation where the same code would be written as follows
mstore(0x80, add(mload(0x80), 3))
Functional style and instructional style can be mixed, but any opcode inside a functional style expression has to return
exactly one stack slot (most of the opcodes do).
Note that the order of arguments is reversed in functional-style as opposed to the instruction-style way. If you use
functional-style, the first argument will end up on the stack top.
Access to External Variables and Functions
Solidity variables and other identifiers can be accessed by simply using their name. For storage and memory variables,
this will push the address and not the value onto the stack. Also note that non-struct and non-array storage variable
addresses occupy two slots on the stack: One for the address and one for the byte offset inside the storage slot. In
assignments (see below), we can even use local Solidity variables to assign to.

Functions external to inline assembly can also be accessed: The assembly will push their entry label (with virtual
function resolution applied). The calling semantics in solidity are:
• the caller pushes return label, arg1, arg2, ..., argn
• the call returns with ret1, ret2, ..., retn
This feature is still a bit cumbersome to use, because the stack offset essentially changes during the call, and thus
references to local variables will be wrong. It is planned that the stack height changes can be specified in inline
assembly.
contract C {
uint b;
function f(uint x) returns (uint r) {
assembly {
b pop // remove the offset, we know it is zero
sload
x
mul
=: r // assign to return variable r
}
}
}
Labels
Another problem in EVM assembly is that jump and jumpi use absolute addresses which can change easily. Solidity
inline assembly provides labels to make the use of jumps easier. The following code computes an element in the
Fibonacci series.
{
let n := calldataload(4)
let a := 1
let b := a
loop:
jumpi(loopend, eq(n, 0))
a add swap1
n := sub(n, 1)
jump(loop)
loopend:
mstore(0, a)
return(0, 0x20)
}
Please note that automatically accessing stack variables can only work if the assembler knows the current stack height.
This fails to work if the jump source and target have different stack heights. It is still fine to use such jumps, you
should just not access any stack variables (even assembly variables) in that case.
Furthermore, the stack height analyser goes through the code opcode by opcode (and not according to control flow),
so in the following case, the assembler will have a wrong impression about the stack height at label two:
{
jump(two)
one:
// Here the stack height is 1 (because we pushed 7),
// but the assembler thinks it is 0 because it reads
// from top to bottom.
// Accessing stack variables here will lead to errors.
jump(three)
two:
7 // push something onto the stack
jump(one)
three:
}
Declaring Assembly-Local Variables
You can use the let keyword to declare variables that are only visible in inline assembly and actually only in the
current {...}-block. What happens is that the let instruction will create a new stack slot that is reserved for the
variable and automatically removed again when the end of the block is reached. You need to provide an initial value
for the variable which can be just 0, but it can also be a complex functional-style expression.
contract C {
function f(uint x) returns (uint b) {
assembly {
let v := add(x, 1)
mstore(0x80, v)
{
let y := add(sload(v), 1)
b := y
} // y is "deallocated" here
b := add(b, v)
} // v is "deallocated" here
}
}
Assignments
Assignments are possible to assembly-local variables and to function-local variables. Take care that when you assign
to variables that point to memory or storage, you will only change the pointer and not the data.
There are two kinds of assignments: Functional-style and instruction-style. For functional-style assignments
(variable := value), you need to provide a value in a functional-style expression that results in exactly one
stack value and for instruction-style (=: variable), the value is just taken from the stack top. For both ways, the
colon points to the name of the variable.
assembly {
let v := 0 // functional-style assignment as part of variable declaration
let g := add(v, 2)
sload(10)
=: v // instruction style assignment, puts the result of sload(10) into v
}
Things to Avoid
Inline assembly might have a quite high-level look, but it actually is extremely low-level. The only thing the assembler
does for you is re-arranging functional-style opcodes, managing jump labels, counting stack height for variable access
and removing stack slots for assembly-local variables when the end of their block is reached. Especially for those
two last cases, it is important to know that the assembler only counts stack height from top to bottom, not necessarily
following control flow. Furthermore, operations like swap will only swap the contents of the stack but not the location
of variables.

Conventions in Solidity
In contrast to EVM assembly, Solidity knows types which are narrower than 256 bits, e.g. uint24. In order to make
them more efficient, most arithmetic operations just treat them as 256 bit numbers and the higher-order bits are only
cleaned at the point where it is necessary, i.e. just shortly before they are written to memory or before comparisons
are performed. This means that if you access such a variable from within inline assembly, you might have to manually
clean the higher order bits first.
Solidity manages memory in a very simple way: There is a “free memory pointer” at position 0x40 in memory. If
you want to allocate memory, just use the memory from that point on and update the pointer accordingly.
Elements in memory arrays in Solidity always occupy multiples of 32 bytes (yes, this is even true for byte[], but not
for bytes and string). Multi-dimensional memory arrays are pointers to memory arrays. The length of a dynamic
array is stored at the first slot of the array and then only the array elements follow.
Warning: Statically-sized memory arrays do not have a length field, but it will be added soon to allow better
convertibility between statically- and dynamically-sized arrays, so please do not rely on that.
5.4.6 Contracts
Contracts in Solidity are what classes are in object oriented languages. They contain persistent data in state variables
and functions that can modify these variables. Calling a function on a different contract (instance) will perform an
EVM function call and thus switch the context such that state variables are inaccessible.
Creating Contracts
Contracts can be created “from outside” or from Solidity contracts. When a contract is created, its constructor (a
function with the same name as the contract) is executed once.
From web3.js, i.e. the JavaScript API, this is done as follows:
// Need to specify some source including contract name for the data param below
var source = "contract CONTRACT_NAME { function CONTRACT_NAME(unit a, uint b) {} }";
// The json abi array generated by the compiler

var abiArray = [
{
"inputs":[
{"name":"x","type":"uint256"},
{"name":"y","type":"uint256"}
],
"type":"constructor"
},
{
"constant":true,
"inputs":[],
"name":"x",
"outputs":[{"name":"","type":"bytes32"}],
"type":"function"
}
];
var MyContract_ = web3.eth.contract(source);

MyContract = web3.eth.contract(MyContract_.CONTRACT_NAME.info.abiDefinition);
// deploy new contract
var contractInstance = MyContract.new(

10,
11,
{from: myAccount, gas: 1000000}
);
Internally, constructor arguments are passed after the code of the contract itself, but you do not have to care about this
if you use web3.js.
If a contract wants to create another contract, the source code (and the binary) of the created contract has to be known
to the creator. This means that cyclic creation dependencies are impossible.
contract OwnedToken {
// TokenCreator is a contract type that is defined below.
// It is fine to reference it as long as it is not used
// to create a new contract.
TokenCreator creator;
address owner;
bytes32 name;
// This is the constructor which registers the

// creator and the assigned name.
function OwnedToken(bytes32 _name) {
owner = msg.sender;
// We do an explicit type conversion from àddress`
// to `TokenCreator` and assume that the type of
// the calling contract is TokenCreator, there is
// no real way to check that.
creator = TokenCreator(msg.sender);
name = _name;
}
function changeName(bytes32 newName) {

// Only the creator can alter the name --
// the comparison is possible since contracts
// are implicitly convertible to addresses.
if (msg.sender == address(creator))
name = newName;
}
function transfer(address newOwner) {

// Only the current owner can transfer the token.
if (msg.sender != owner) return;
// We also want to ask the creator if the transfer
// is fine. Note that this calls a function of the
// contract defined below. If the call fails (e.g.
// due to out-of-gas), the execution here stops
// immediately.
if (creator.isTokenTransferOK(owner, newOwner))
owner = newOwner;
}
}
contract TokenCreator {
function createToken(bytes32 name)
returns (OwnedToken tokenAddress)
{
// Create a new Token contract and return its address.
// From the JavaScript side, the return type is simply

// "address", as this is the closest type available in

// the ABI.
return new OwnedToken(name);
}
function changeName(OwnedToken tokenAddress, bytes32 name) {

// Again, the external type of "tokenAddress" is
// simply "address".
tokenAddress.changeName(name);
}
function isTokenTransferOK(
address currentOwner,
address newOwner
) returns (bool ok) {
// Check some arbitrary condition.
address tokenAddress = msg.sender;
return (sha3(newOwner) & 0xff) == (bytes20(tokenAddress) & 0xff);
}
}
Visibility and Accessors
Since Solidity knows two kinds of function calls (internal ones that do not create an actual EVM call (also called a
“message call”) and external ones that do), there are four types of visibilities for functions and state variables.
Functions can be specified as being external, public, internal or private, where the default is public.
For state variables, external is not possible and the default is internal.
external: External functions are part of the contract interface, which means they can be called from other contracts
and via transactions. An external function f cannot be called internally (i.e. f() does not work, but this.f()
works). External functions are sometimes more efficient when they receive large arrays of data.
public: Public functions are part of the contract interface and can be either called internally or via messages. For
public state variables, an automatic accessor function (see below) is generated.
internal: Those functions and state variables can only be accessed internally (i.e. from within the current contract
or contracts deriving from it), without using this.
private: Private functions and state variables are only visible for the contract they are defined in and not in derived
contracts.
Note: Everything that is inside a contract is visible to all external observers. Making something private only
prevents other contract from accessing and modifying the information, but it will still be visible to the whole world
outside of the blockchain.
The visibility specifier is given after the type for state variables and between parameter list and return parameter list
for functions.
contract C {
function f(uint a) private returns (uint b) { return a + 1; }
function setData(uint a) internal { data = a; }
uint public data;
}
Other contracts can call c.data() to retrieve the value of data in state storage, but are not able to call f. Contracts
derived from c can call setData to alter the value of data (but only in their own state).
Accessor Functions
The compiler automatically creates accessor functions for all public state variables. The contract given below will
have a function called data that does not take any arguments and returns a uint, the value of the state variable data.
The initialization of state variables can be done at declaration.
The accessor functions have external visibility. If the symbol is accessed internally (i.e. without this.), it is a state
variable and if it is accessed externally (i.e. with this.), it is a function.
contract Test {
uint public data = 42;
}
The next example is a bit more complex:

contract Complex {
struct Data {
uint a;
bytes3 b;
mapping (uint => uint) map;
}
mapping (uint => mapping(bool => Data[])) public data;
}
It will generate a function of the following form:

function data(uint arg1, bool arg2, uint arg3) returns (uint a, bytes3 b) {
a = data[arg1][arg2][arg3].a;
b = data[arg1][arg2][arg3].b;
}
Note that the mapping in the struct is omitted because there is no good way to provide the key for the mapping.
Function Modifiers
Modifiers can be used to easily change the behaviour of functions, for example to automatically check a condition prior
to executing the function. They are inheritable properties of contracts and may be overridden by derived contracts.
contract owned {
function owned() { owner = msg.sender; }
address owner;
// This contract only defines a modifier but does not use

// it - it will be used in derived contracts.
// The function body is inserted where the special symbol
// "_" in the definition of a modifier appears.
// This means that if the owner calls this function, the
// function is executed and otherwise, an exception is
// thrown.
modifier onlyOwner {
if (msg.sender != owner)
throw;
_
}
}
contract mortal is owned {

// This contract inherits the "onlyOwner"-modifier from

// "owned" and applies it to the "close"-function, which
// causes that calls to "close" only have an effect if
// they are made by the stored owner.
function close() onlyOwner {
selfdestruct(owner);
}
}
contract priced {
// Modifiers can receive arguments:
modifier costs(uint price) {
if (msg.value >= price) {
_
}
}
}
contract Register is priced, owned {

mapping (address => bool) registeredAddresses;
uint price;
function Register(uint initialPrice) { price = initialPrice; }
function register() costs(price) {

registeredAddresses[msg.sender] = true;
}
function changePrice(uint _price) onlyOwner {

price = _price;
}
}
contract Mutex {
bool locked;
modifier noReentrancy() {
if (locked) throw;
locked = true;
_
locked = false;
}
/// This function is protected by a mutex, which means that

/// reentrant calls from within msg.sender.call cannot call f again.
/// The `return 7` statement assigns 7 to the return value but still
/// executes the statement `locked = false` in the modifier.
function f() noReentrancy returns (uint) {
if (!msg.sender.call()) throw;
return 7;
}
}
Multiple modifiers can be applied to a function by specifying them in a whitespace-separated list and will be evaluated
in order.
Warning: In an earlier version of Solidity, return statements in functions having modifiers behaved differently.
Explicit returns from a modifier or function body only leave the current modifier or function body. Return variables
are assigned and control flow continues after the “_” in the preceding modifier.
Arbitrary expressions are allowed for modifier arguments and in this context, all symbols visible from the function are
visible in the modifier. Symbols introduced in the modifier are not visible in the function (as they might change by
overriding).
Constants
State variables can be declared as constant (this is not yet implemented for array and struct types and not possible for
mapping types).
contract C {
uint constant x = 32**22 + 8;
string constant text = "abc";
}
This has the effect that the compiler does not reserve a storage slot for these variables and every occurrence is replaced
by their constant value.
The value expression can only contain integer arithmetics.
Fallback Function
A contract can have exactly one unnamed function. This function cannot have arguments and is executed on a call to
the contract if none of the other functions matches the given function identifier (or if no data was supplied at all).
Furthermore, this function is executed whenever the contract receives plain Ether (without data). In such a context,
there is very little gas available to the function call (to be precise, 2300 gas), so it is important to make fallback
functions as cheap as possible.
contract Test {
function() { x = 1; }
uint x;
}
// This contract rejects any Ether sent to it. It is good

// practise to include such a function for every contract
// in order not to lose Ether.
contract Rejector {
function() { throw; }
}
contract Caller {
function callTest(address testAddress) {
Test(testAddress).call(0xabcdef01); // hash does not exist
// results in Test(testAddress).x becoming == 1.
Rejector r = Rejector(0x123);
r.send(2 ether);
// results in r.balance == 0
}
}

Events
Events allow the convenient usage of the EVM logging facilities, which in turn can be used to “call” JavaScript
callbacks in the user interface of a dapp, which listen for these events.
Events are inheritable members of contracts. When they are called, they cause the arguments to be stored in the
transaction’s log - a special data structure in the blockchain. These logs are associated with the address of the contract
and will be incorporated into the blockchain and stay there as long as a block is accessible (forever as of Frontier and
Homestead, but this might change with Serenity). Log and event data is not accessible from within contracts (not even
from the contract that created a log).
SPV proofs for logs are possible, so if an external entity supplies a contract with such a proof, it can check that the
log actually exists inside the blockchain (but be aware of the fact that ultimately, also the block headers have to be
supplied because the contract can only see the last 256 block hashes).
Up to three parameters can receive the attribute indexed which will cause the respective arguments to be searched
for: It is possible to filter for specific values of indexed arguments in the user interface.
If arrays (including string and bytes) are used as indexed arguments, the sha3-hash of it is stored as topic instead.
The hash of the signature of the event is one of the topics except if you declared the event with anonymous specifier.
This means that it is not possible to filter for specific anonymous events by name.
All non-indexed arguments will be stored in the data part of the log.
contract ClientReceipt {
event Deposit(
address indexed _from,
bytes32 indexed _id,
uint _value
);
function deposit(bytes32 _id) {

// Any call to this function (even deeply nested) can
// be detected from the JavaScript API by filtering
// for `Deposit` to be called.
Deposit(msg.sender, _id, msg.value);
}
}
The use in the JavaScript API would be as follows:

var abi = /* abi as generated by the compiler */;
var ClientReceipt = web3.eth.contract(abi);
var clientReceipt = ClientReceipt.at(0x123 /* address */);
var event = clientReceipt.Deposit();
// watch for changes

event.watch(function(error, result){
// result will contain various information
// including the argumets given to the Deposit
// call.
if (!error)
console.log(result);
});
// Or pass a callback to start watching immediately

var event = clientReceipt.Deposit(function(error, result) {
if (!error)
console.log(result);
});
Low-Level Interface to Logs
It is also possible to access the low-level interface to the logging mechanism via the functions log0, log1, log2,
log3 and log4. logi takes i + 1 parameter of type bytes32, where the first argument will be used for the data
part of the log and the others as topics. The event call above can be performed in the same way as
log3(
msg.value,
0x50cb9fe53daa9737b786ab3646f04d0150dc50ef4e75f59509d83667ad5adb20,
msg.sender,
_id
);
where the long hexadecimal number is equal to sha3("Deposit(address,hash256,uint256)"), the sig-

nature of the event.
Additional Resources for Understanding Events
• Javascript documentation
• Example usage of events
• How to access them in js
Inheritance
Solidity supports multiple inheritance by copying code including polymorphism.

All function calls are virtual, which means that the most derived function is called, except when the contract is explic-
itly given.
Even if a contract inherits from multiple other contracts, only a single contract is created on the blockchain, the code
from the base contracts is always copied into the final contract.
The general inheritance system is very similar to Python’s, especially concerning multiple inheritance.
Details are given in the following example.
contract owned {
function owned() { owner = msg.sender; }
address owner;
}
// Use "is" to derive from another contract. Derived

// contracts can access all non-private members including
// internal functions and state variables. These cannot be
// accessed externally via `this`, though.
function kill() {
if (msg.sender == owner) selfdestruct(owner);
}
}

// These abstract contracts are only provided to make the

// interface known to the compiler. Note the function
// without body. If a contract does not implement all
// functions it can only be used as an interface.
contract Config {
function lookup(uint id) returns (address adr);
}
contract NameReg {
function register(bytes32 name);
function unregister();
}
// Multiple inheritance is possible. Note that "owned" is

// also a base class of "mortal", yet there is only a single
// instance of "owned" (as for virtual inheritance in C++).
contract named is owned, mortal {
function named(bytes32 name) {
Config config = Config(0xd5f9d8d94886e70b06e474c3fb14fd43e2f23970);
NameReg(config.lookup(1)).register(name);
}
// Functions can be overridden, both local and

// message-based function calls take these overrides
// into account.
function kill() {
if (msg.sender == owner) {
Config config = Config(0xd5f9d8d94886e70b06e474c3fb14fd43e2f23970);
NameReg(config.lookup(1)).unregister();
// It is still possible to call a specific
// overridden function.
mortal.kill();
}
}
}
// If a constructor takes an argument, it needs to be

// provided in the header (or modifier-invocation-style at
// the constructor of the derived contract (see below)).
contract PriceFeed is owned, mortal, named("GoldFeed") {
function updateInfo(uint newInfo) {
if (msg.sender == owner) info = newInfo;
}
function get() constant returns(uint r) { return info; }
uint info;
}
Note that above, we call mortal.kill() to “forward” the destruction request. The way this is done is problematic,
as seen in the following example:
function kill() {

}
}
contract Base1 is mortal {

function kill() { /* do cleanup 1 */ mortal.kill(); }
}

function kill() { /* do cleanup 2 */ mortal.kill(); }
}
contract Final is Base1, Base2 {

}
A call to Final.kill() will call Base2.kill as the most derived override, but this function will bypass
Base1.kill, basically because it does not even know about Base1. The way around this is to use super:
function kill() {
}
}

function kill() { /* do cleanup 1 */ super.kill(); }
}

function kill() { /* do cleanup 2 */ super.kill(); }
}
contract Final is Base2, Base1 {

}
If Base1 calls a function of super, it does not simply call this function on one of its base contracts, it rather calls
this function on the next base contract in the final inheritance graph, so it will call Base2.kill() (note that the final
inheritance sequence is – starting with the most derived contract: Final, Base1, Base2, mortal, owned). The actual
function that is called when using super is not known in the context of the class where it is used, although its type is
known. This is similar for ordinary virtual method lookup.
Arguments for Base Constructors
Derived contracts need to provide all arguments needed for the base constructors. This can be done at two places:
contract Base {
uint x;
function Base(uint _x) { x = _x; }
}

contract Derived is Base(7) {

function Derived(uint _y) Base(_y * _y) {
}
}
Either directly in the inheritance list (is Base(7)) or in the way a modifier would be invoked as part of the header
of the derived constructor (Base(_y * _y)). The first way to do it is more convenient if the constructor argument
is a constant and defines the behaviour of the contract or describes it. The second way has to be used if the constructor
arguments of the base depend on those of the derived contract. If, as in this silly example, both places are used, the
modifier-style argument takes precedence.
Multiple Inheritance and Linearization
Languages that allow multiple inheritance have to deal with several problems, one of them being the Diamond Problem.
Solidity follows the path of Python and uses “C3 Linearization” to force a specific order in the DAG of base classes.
This results in the desirable property of monotonicity but disallows some inheritance graphs. Especially, the order in
which the base classes are given in the is directive is important. In the following code, Solidity will give the error
“Linearization of inheritance graph impossible”.
contract X {}
contract A is X {}
contract C is A, X {}
The reason for this is that C requests X to override A (by specifying A, X in this order), but A itself requests to override
X, which is a contradiction that cannot be resolved.
A simple rule to remember is to specify the base classes in the order from “most base-like” to “most derived”.
Abstract Contracts
Contract functions can lack an implementation as in the following example (note that the function declaration header
is terminated by ;):
contract Feline {
function utterance() returns (bytes32);
}
Such contracts cannot be compiled (even if they contain implemented functions alongside non-implemented func-
tions), but they can be used as base contracts:
contract Cat is Feline {
function utterance() returns (bytes32) { return "miaow"; }
}
If a contract inherits from an abstract contract and does not implement all non-implemented functions by overriding,
it will itself be abstract.
Libraries
Libraries are similar to contracts, but their purpose is that they are deployed only once at a specific address and their
code is reused using the DELEGATECALL (CALLCODE until Homestead) feature of the EVM. This means that if
library functions are called, their code is executed in the context of the calling contract, i.e. this points to the calling
contract, and especially the storage from the calling contract can be accessed. As a library is an isolated piece of
source code, it can only access state variables of the calling contract if they are explicitly supplied (it would have no
way to name them, otherwise).
Libraries can be seen as implicit base contracts of the contracts that use them. They will not be explicitly visible in the
inheritance hierarchy, but calls to library functions look just like calls to functions of explicit base contracts (L.f()
if L is the name of the library). Furthermore, internal functions of libraries are visible in all contracts, just as if
the library were a base contract. Of course, calls to internal functions use the internal calling convention, which means
that all internal types can be passed and memory types will be passed by reference and not copied. In order to realise
this in the EVM, code of internal library functions (and all functions called from therein) will be pulled into the calling
contract and a regular JUMP call will be used instead of a DELEGATECALL.
The following example illustrates how to use libraries (but be sure to check out using for for a more advanced example
to implement a set).
library Set {
// We define a new struct datatype that will be used to
// hold its data in the calling contract.
struct Data { mapping(uint => bool) flags; }
// Note that the first parameter is of type "storage

// reference" and thus only its storage address and not
// its contents is passed as part of the call. This is a
// special feature of library functions. It is idiomatic
// to call the first parameter 'self', if the function can
// be seen as a method of that object.
function insert(Data storage self, uint value)
returns (bool)
{
if (self.flags[value])
return false; // already there
self.flags[value] = true;
return true;
}
function remove(Data storage self, uint value)

returns (bool)
{
if (!self.flags[value])
return false; // not there
self.flags[value] = false;
return true;
}
function contains(Data storage self, uint value)

returns (bool)
{
return self.flags[value];
}
}
contract C {
Set.Data knownValues;
function register(uint value) {

// The library functions can be called without a
// specific instance of the library, since the
// "instance" will be the current contract.
if (!Set.insert(knownValues, value))
throw;
}
// In this contract, we can also directly access knownValues.flags, if we want.

Of course, you do not have to follow this way to use libraries - they can also be used without defining struct data types,
functions also work without any storage reference parameters, can have multiple storage reference parameters and in
any position.
The calls to Set.contains, Set.insert and Set.remove are all compiled as calls (DELEGATECALL)
to an external contract/library. If you use libraries, take care that an actual external function call is per-
formed. msg.sender, msg.value and this will retain their values in this call, though (prior to Homestead,
msg.sender and msg.value changed, though).
The following example shows how to use memory types and internal functions in libraries in order to implement
custom types without the overhead of external function calls:
library BigInt {
struct bigint {
uint[] limbs;
}
function fromUint(uint x) internal returns (bigint r) {

r.limbs = new uint[](1);
r.limbs[0] = x;
}
function add(bigint _a, bigint _b) internal returns (bigint r) {

r.limbs = new uint[](max(_a.limbs.length, _b.limbs.length));
uint carry = 0;
for (uint i = 0; i < r.limbs.length; ++i) {
uint a = limb(_a, i);
uint b = limb(_b, i);
r.limbs[i] = a + b + carry;
if (a + b < a || (a + b == uint(-1) && carry > 0))
carry = 1;
else
carry = 0;
}
if (carry > 0) {
// too bad, we have to add a limb
uint[] memory newLimbs = new uint[](r.limbs.length + 1);
for (i = 0; i < r.limbs.length; ++i)
newLimbs[i] = r.limbs[i];
newLimbs[i] = carry;
r.limbs = newLimbs;
}
}
function limb(bigint _a, uint _limb) internal returns (uint) {

return _limb < _a.limbs.length ? _a.limbs[_limb] : 0;
}
function max(uint a, uint b) private returns (uint) {

return a > b ? a : b;
}
}
contract C {
using BigInt for BigInt.bigint;
function f() {
var x = BigInt.fromUint(7);
var y = BigInt.fromUint(uint(-1));
var z = x.add(y);
}
}
As the compiler cannot know where the library will be deployed at, these addresses have to be filled into the final
bytecode by a linker (see Using the Commandline Compiler) on how to use the commandline compiler for linking). If
the addresses are not given as arguments to the compiler, the compiled hex code will contain placeholders of the form
__Set______ (where Set is the name of the library). The address can be filled manually by replacing all those 40
symbols by the hex encoding of the address of the library contract.
Restrictions for libraries in comparison to contracts:
• no state variables
• cannot inherit nor be inherited
(these might be lifted at a later point)
Using For
The directive using A for B; can be used to attach library functions (from the library A) to any type (B). These
functions will receive the object they are called on as their first parameter (like the self variable in Python).
The effect of using A for *; is that the functions from the library A are attached to any type.
In both situations, all functions, even those where the type of the first parameter does not match the type of the object,
are attached. The type is checked at the point the function is called and function overload resolution is performed.
The using A for B; directive is active for the current scope, which is limited to a contract for now but will be
lifted to the global scope later, so that by including a module, its data types including library functions are available
without having to add further code.
Let us rewrite the set example from the Libraries in this way:
// This is the same code as before, just without comments
library Set {
struct Data { mapping(uint => bool) flags; }
function insert(Data storage self, uint value)

returns (bool)
{
if (self.flags[value])
return false; // already there
self.flags[value] = true;
return true;
}
function remove(Data storage self, uint value)

returns (bool)
{
if (!self.flags[value])
return false; // not there
self.flags[value] = false;
return true;
}
function contains(Data storage self, uint value)

returns (bool)
{
return self.flags[value];
}
}
contract C {
using Set for Set.Data; // this is the crucial change
Set.Data knownValues;
function register(uint value) {

// Here, all variables of type Set.Data have
// corresponding member functions.
// The following function call is identical to
// Set.insert(knownValues, value)
if (!knownValues.insert(value))
throw;
}
}
It is also possible to extend elementary types in that way:

library Search {
function indexOf(uint[] storage self, uint value) returns (uint) {
for (uint i = 0; i < self.length; i++)
if (self[i] == value) return i;
return uint(-1);
}
}
contract C {
using Search for uint[];
uint[] data;
function append(uint value) {

data.push(value);
}
function replace(uint _old, uint _new) {

// This performs the library function call
uint index = data.indexOf(_old);
if (index == uint(-1))
data.push(_new);
else
data[index] = _new;
}
}
Note that all library calls are actual EVM function calls. This means that if you pass memory or value types, a copy
will be performed, even of the self variable. The only situation where no copy will be performed is when storage
reference variables are used.
5.4.7 Miscellaneous
Layout of State Variables in Storage
Statically-sized variables (everything except mapping and dynamically-sized array types) are laid out contiguously in
storage starting from position 0. Multiple items that need less than 32 bytes are packed into a single storage slot if
possible, according to the following rules:
• The first item in a storage slot is stored lower-order aligned.
• Elementary types use only that many bytes that are necessary to store them.
• If an elementary type does not fit the remaining part of a storage slot, it is moved to the next storage slot.
• Structs and array data always start a new slot and occupy whole slots (but items inside a struct or array are
packed tightly according to these rules).
The elements of structs and arrays are stored after each other, just as if they were given explicitly.
Due to their unpredictable size, mapping and dynamically-sized array types use a sha3 computation to find the
starting position of the value or the array data. These starting positions are always full stack slots.
The mapping or the dynamic array itself occupies an (unfilled) slot in storage at some position p according to the
above rule (or by recursively applying this rule for mappings to mappings or arrays of arrays). For a dynamic array,
this slot stores the number of elements in the array (byte arrays and strings are an exception here, see below). For
a mapping, the slot is unused (but it is needed so that two equal mappings after each other will use a different hash
distribution). Array data is located at sha3(p) and the value corresponding to a mapping key k is located at sha3(k
. p) where . is concatenation. If the value is again a non-elementary type, the positions are found by adding an
offset of sha3(k . p).
bytes and string store their data in the same slot where also the length is stored if they are short. In particular:
If the data is at most 31 bytes long, it is stored in the higher-order bytes (left aligned) and the lowest-order byte
stores length * 2. If it is longer, the main slot stores length * 2 + 1 and the data is stored as usual in
sha3(slot).
So for the following contract snippet:
contract C {
struct s { uint a; uint b; }
uint x;
mapping(uint => mapping(uint => s)) data;
}
The position of data[4][9].b is at sha3(uint256(9) . sha3(uint256(4) . uint256(1))) +

1.
Esoteric Features
There are some types in Solidity’s type system that have no counterpart in the syntax. One of these types are the types
of functions. But still, using var it is possible to have local variables of these types:
contract FunctionSelector {
function select(bool useB, uint x) returns (uint z) {
var f = a;
if (useB) f = b;
return f(x);
}
function a(uint x) returns (uint z) {

return x * x;
}
function b(uint x) returns (uint z) {

return 2 * x;
}
}
Calling select(false, x) will compute x * x and select(true, x) will compute 2 * x.
Internals - the Optimizer
The Solidity optimizer operates on assembly, so it can be and also is used by other languages. It splits the sequence
of instructions into basic blocks at JUMPs and JUMPDESTs. Inside these blocks, the instructions are analysed and
every modification to the stack, to memory or storage is recorded as an expression which consists of an instruction
and a list of arguments which are essentially pointers to other expressions. The main idea is now to find expressions
that are always equal (on every input) and combine them into an expression class. The optimizer first tries to find each
new expression in a list of already known expressions. If this does not work, the expression is simplified according
to rules like constant + constant = sum_of_constants or X * 1 = X. Since this is done recursively,
we can also apply the latter rule if the second factor is a more complex expression where we know that it will always
evaluate to one. Modifications to storage and memory locations have to erase knowledge about storage and memory
locations which are not known to be different: If we first write to location x and then to location y and both are input
variables, the second could overwrite the first, so we actually do not know what is stored at x after we wrote to y. On
the other hand, if a simplification of the expression x - y evaluates to a non-zero constant, we know that we can keep
our knowledge about what is stored at x.
At the end of this process, we know which expressions have to be on the stack in the end and have a list of modifications
to memory and storage. This information is stored together with the basic blocks and is used to link them. Furthermore,
knowledge about the stack, storage and memory configuration is forwarded to the next block(s). If we know the targets
of all JUMP and JUMPI instructions, we can build a complete control flow graph of the program. If there is only one
target we do not know (this can happen as in principle, jump targets can be computed from inputs), we have to erase
all knowledge about the input state of a block as it can be the target of the unknown JUMP. If a JUMPI is found whose
condition evaluates to a constant, it is transformed to an unconditional jump.
As the last step, the code in each block is completely re-generated. A dependency graph is created from the expressions
on the stack at the end of the block and every operation that is not part of this graph is essentially dropped. Now code
is generated that applies the modifications to memory and storage in the order they were made in the original code
(dropping modifications which were found not to be needed) and finally, generates all values that are required to be on
the stack in the correct place.
These steps are applied to each basic block and the newly generated code is used as replacement if it is smaller. If a
basic block is split at a JUMPI and during the analysis, the condition evaluates to a constant, the JUMPI is replaced
depending on the value of the constant, and thus code like
var x = 7;
data[7] = 9;
if (data[x] != x + 2)
return 2;
else
return 1;
is simplified to code which can also be compiled from

data[7] = 9;
return 1;
even though the instructions contained a jump in the beginning.
Source Mappings
As part of the AST output, the compiler provides the range of the source code that is represented by the respective
node in the AST. This can be used for various purposes ranging from static analysis tools that report errors based on
the AST and debugging tools that highlight local variables and their uses.
Furthermore, the compiler can also generate a mapping from the bytecode to the range in the source code that generated
the instruction. This is again important for static analysis tools that operate on bytecode level and for displaying the
current position in the source code inside a debugger or for breakpoint handling.
Both kinds of source mappings use integer indentifiers to refer to source files. These are regular array indices into a
list of source files usually called "sourceList", which is part of the combined-json and the output of the json /
npm compiler.
The source mappings inside the AST use the following notation:
s:l:f
Where s is the byte-offset to the start of the range in the source file, l is the length of the source range in bytes and f
is the source index mentioned above.
The encoding in the source mapping for the bytecode is more complicated: It is a list of s:l:f:j separated by ;.
Each of these elements corresponds to an instruction, i.e. you cannot use the byte offset but have to use the instruction
offset (push instructions are longer than a single byte). The fields s, l and f are as above and j can be either i, o or -
signifying whether a jump instruction goes into a function, returns from a function or is a regular jump as part of e.g.
a loop.
In order to compress these source mappings especially for bytecode, the following rules are used:
• If a field is empty, the value of the preceding element is used.
• If a : is missing, all following fields are considered empty.
This means the following source mappings represent the same information:
1:2:1;1:9:1;2:1:2;2:1:2;2:1:2
1:2:1;:9;2::2;;
Using the Commandline Compiler
One of the build targets of the Solidity repository is solc, the solidity commandline compiler. Using solc --help
provides you with an explanation of all options. The compiler can produce various outputs, ranging from simple
binaries and assembly over an abstract syntax tree (parse tree) to estimations of gas usage. If you only want to compile
a single file, you run it as solc --bin sourceFile.sol and it will print the binary. Before you deploy your
contract, activate the optimizer while compiling using solc --optimize --bin sourceFile.sol. If you
want to get some of the more advanced output variants of solc, it is probably better to tell it to output everything to
separate files using solc -o outputDirectory --bin --ast --asm sourceFile.sol.
The commandline compiler will automatically read imported files from the filesystem, but it is also possible to provide
path redirects using context:prefix=path in the following way:
solc github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/=/usr/local/lib/dapp-bin/ =/usr/local/lib/fallback file.so
This essentially instructs the compiler to search for anything starting with github.com/ethereum/dapp-bin/
under /usr/local/lib/dapp-bin and if it does not find the file there, it will look at
/usr/local/lib/fallback (the empty prefix always matches). solc will not read files from the filesystem
that lie outside of the remapping targets and outside of the directories where explicitly specified source files reside, so
things like import "/etc/passwd"; only work if you add =/ as a remapping.

You can restrict remappings to only certain source files by prefixing a context.
The section on Importing other Source Files provides more details on remappings.
If there are multiple matches due to remappings, the one with the longest common prefix is selected.
If your contracts use libraries, you will notice that the bytecode contains substrings of the form
__LibraryName______. You can use solc as a linker meaning that it will insert the library addresses for you at
those points:
Either add --libraries "Math:0x12345678901234567890 Heap:0xabcdef0123456" to your com-
mand to provide an address for each library or store the string in a file (one library per line) and run solc using
--libraries fileName.
If solc is called with the option --link, all input files are interpreted to be unlinked binaries (hex-encoded) in the
__LibraryName____-format given above and are linked in-place (if the input is read from stdin, it is written to
stdout). All options except --libraries are ignored (including -o) in this case.
Tips and Tricks
• Use delete on arrays to delete all its elements.

• Use shorter types for struct elements and sort them such that short types are grouped together. This can lower
the gas costs as multiple SSTORE operations might be combined into a single (SSTORE costs 5000 or 20000
gas, so this is what you want to optimise). Use the gas price estimator (with optimiser enabled) to check!
• Make your state variables public - the compiler will create getters for you for free.
• If you end up checking conditions on input or state a lot at the beginning of your functions, try using Function
Modifiers.
• If your contract has a function called send but you want to use the built-in send-function, use
address(contractVariable).send(amount).
• If you do not want your contracts to receive ether when called via send, you can add a throwing fallback
function function() { throw; }.
• Initialise storage structs with a single assignment: x = MyStruct({a: 1, b: 2});
Cheatsheet
Order of Precedence of Operators
The following is the order of precedence for operators, listed in order of evaluation.
Precedence Description Operator

Postfix increment and decrement ++, --
Function-like call <func>(<args...>)
1 Array subscripting <array>[<index>]
Member access <object>.<member>
Parentheses (<statement>)
Prefix increment and decrement ++, --
Unary plus and minus +, -
2 Unary operations delete
Logical NOT !
Bitwise NOT ~
3 Exponentiation **
4 Multiplication, division and *, /, %
modulo
5 Addition and subtraction +, -
6 Bitwise shift operators <<, >>
7 Bitwise AND &
8 Bitwise XOR ^
9 Bitwise OR |
10 Inequality operators <, >, <=, >=
11 Equality operators ==, !=
12 Logical AND &&
13 Logical OR ||
14 Ternary operator <conditional> ? <if-true> :
<if-false>
15 Assignment operators =, |=, ^=, &=, <<=, >>=, +=, -=, *=, /=, %=
16 Comma operator ,
Global Variables
• block.blockhash(uint blockNumber) returns (bytes32): hash of the given block - only

works for 256 most recent blocks
• block.coinbase (address): current block miner’s address
• block.difficulty (uint): current block difficulty
• block.gaslimit (uint): current block gaslimit
• block.number (uint): current block number
• block.timestamp (uint): current block timestamp
• msg.data (bytes): complete calldata
• msg.gas (uint): remaining gas
• msg.sender (address): sender of the message (current call)
• msg.value (uint): number of wei sent with the message
• now (uint): current block timestamp (alias for block.timestamp)
• tx.gasprice (uint): gas price of the transaction
• tx.origin (address): sender of the transaction (full call chain)
• sha3(...) returns (bytes32): compute the Ethereum-SHA-3 (KECCAK-256) hash of the (tightly
packed) arguments

• sha256(...) returns (bytes32): compute the SHA-256 hash of the (tightly packed) arguments
• ripemd160(...) returns (bytes20): compute the RIPEMD-160 hash of the (tightly packed) ar-
guments
• ecrecover(bytes32 hash, uint8 v, bytes32 r, bytes32 s) returns (address):
recover address associated with the public key from elliptic curve signature, return zero on error
• addmod(uint x, uint y, uint k) returns (uint): compute (x + y) % k where the addi-
tion is performed with arbitrary precision and does not wrap around at 2**256
• mulmod(uint x, uint y, uint k) returns (uint): compute (x * y) % k where the mul-
tiplication is performed with arbitrary precision and does not wrap around at 2**256
• this (current contract’s type): the current contract, explicitly convertible to address
• super: the contract one level higher in the inheritance hierarchy
• selfdestruct(address recipient): destroy the current contract, sending its funds to the given ad-
dress
• <address>.balance (uint256): balance of the address in Wei
• <address>.send(uint256 amount) returns (bool): send given amount of Wei to address, re-
turns false on failure
Function Visibility Specifiers
function myFunction() <visibility specifier> returns (bool) {

return true;
}
• public: visible externally and internally (creates accessor function for storage/state variables)
• private: only visible in the current contract
• external: only visible externally (only for functions) - i.e. can only be message-called (via this.func)
• internal: only visible internally
Modifiers
• constant for state variables: Disallows assignment (except initialisation), does not occupy storage slot.
• constant for functions: Disallows modification of state - this is not enforced yet.
• anonymous for events: Does not store event signature as topic.
• indexed for event parameters: Stores the parameter as topic.
5.5 Security Considerations
While it is usually quite easy to build software that works as expected, it is much harder to check that nobody can use
it in a way that was not anticipated.
In Solidity, this is even more important because you can use smart contracts to handle tokens or, possibly, even more
valuable things. Furthermore, every execution of a smart contract happens in public and, in addition to that, the source
code is often available.
Of course you always have to consider how much is at stake: You can compare a smart contract with a web service
that is open to the public (and thus, also to malicous actors) and perhaps even open source. If you only store your
grocery list on that web service, you might not have to take too much care, but if you manage your bank account using
that web service, you should be more careful.
This section will list some pitfalls and general security recommendations but can, of course, never be complete. Also,
keep in mind that even if your smart contract code is bug-free, the compiler or the platform itself might have a bug.
As always, with open source documentation, please help us extend this section (especially, some examples would not
hurt)!
5.5.1 Pitfalls
Private Information and Randomness
Everything you use in a smart contract is publicly visible, even local variables and state variables marked private.
Using random numbers in smart contracts is quite tricky if you do not want miners to be able to cheat.
Re-Entrancy
Any interaction from a contract (A) with another contract (B) and any transfer of Ether hands over control to that
contract (B). This makes it possible for B to call back into A before this interaction is completed. To give an example,
the following code contains a bug (it is just a snippet and not a complete contract):
// THIS CONTRACT CONTAINS A BUG - DO NOT USE
contract Fund {
/// M apping of ether shares of the contract.
mapping(address => uint) shares;
/// W ithdraw your share.
if (msg.sender.send(shares[msg.sender]))
shares[msg.sender] = 0;
}
}
The problem is not too serious here because of the limited gas as part of send, but it still exposes a weakness: Ether
transfer always includes code execution, so the recipient could be a contract that calls back into withdraw. This
would let it get multiple refunds and basically retrieve all the Ether in the contract.
To avoid re-entrancy, you can use the Checks-Effects-Interactions pattern as outlined further below:
contract Fund {
/// M apping of ether shares of the contract.
mapping(address => uint) shares;
/// W ithdraw your share.
var share = shares[msg.sender];
shares[msg.sender] = 0;
if (!msg.sender.send(share))
throw;
}
}
Note that re-entrancy is not only an effect of Ether transfer but of any function call on another contract. Furthermore,
you also have to take multi-contract situations into account. A called contract could modify the state of another
contract you depend on.
5.5. Security Considerations 77

Gas Limit and Loops
Loops that do not have a fixed number of iterations, for example, loops that depend on storage values, have to be used
carefully: Due to the block gas limit, transactions can only consume a certain amount of gas. Either explicitly or just
due to normal operation, the number of iterations in a loop can grow beyond the block gas limit which can cause the
complete contract to be stalled at a certain point. This may not apply to constant functions that are only executed
to read data from the blockchain. Still, such functions may be called by other contracts as part of on-chain operations
and stall those. Please be explicit about such cases in the documentation of your contracts.
Sending and Receiving Ether
• If a contract receives Ether (without a function being called), the fallback function is executed. The contract can
only rely on the “gas stipend” (2300 gas) being available to it at that time. This stipend is not enough to access
storage in any way. To be sure that your contract can receive Ether in that way, check the gas requirements of
the fallback function (for example in the “details” section in browser-solidity).
• There is a way to forward more gas to the receiving contract using addr.call.value(x)(). This is
essentially the same as addr.send(x), only that it forwards all remaining gas and opens up the ability for
the recipient to perform more expensive actions. This might include calling back into the sending contract or
other state changes you might not have though of. So it allows for great flexibility for honest users but also for
malicious actors.
• If you want to send Ether using address.send, there are certain details to be aware of:
1. If the recipient is a contract, it causes its fallback function to be executed which can, in turn, call back the
sending contract.
2. Sending Ether can fail due to the call depth going above 1024. Since the caller is in total control of the call
depth, they can force the transfer to fail; make sure to always check the return value of send. Better yet,
write your contract using a pattern where the recipient can withdraw Ether instead.
3. Sending Ether can also fail because the execution of the recipient contract requires more than the allotted
amount of gas (explicitly by using throw or because the operation is just too expensive) - it “runs out of
gas” (OOG). If the return value of send is checked, this might provide a means for the recipient to block
progress in the sending contract. Again, the best practice here is to use a “withdraw” pattern instead of a
“send” pattern.
Callstack Depth
External function calls can fail any time because they exceed the maximum call stack of 1024. In such situations,
Solidity throws an exception. Malicious actors might be able to force the call stack to a high value before they interact
with your contract.
Note that .send() does not throw an exception if the call stack is depleted but rather returns false in that case.
The low-level functions .call(), .callcode() and .delegatecall() behave in the same way.
tx.origin
Never use tx.origin for authorization. Let’s say you have a wallet contract like this:
contract TxUserWallet {
address owner;
function TxUserWallet() {
owner = msg.sender;
function transfer(address dest, uint amount) {

if (tx.origin != owner) { throw; }
if (!dest.call.value(amount)()) throw;
}
}
Now someone tricks you into sending ether to the address of this attack wallet:
contract TxAttackWallet {
address owner;
function TxAttackWallet() {
owner = msg.sender;
}
function() {
TxUserWallet(msg.sender).transfer(owner, msg.sender.balance);
}
}
If your wallet had checked msg.sender for authorization, it would get the address of the attack wallet, instead of the
owner address. But by checking tx.origin, it gets the original address that kicked off the transaction, which is still the
owner address. The attack wallet instantly drains all your funds.
Minor Details
• In for (var i = 0; i < arrayName.length; i++) { ... }, the type of i will be uint8,
because this is the smallest type that is required to hold the value 0. If the array has more than 255 elements,
the loop will not terminate.
• The constant keyword for functions is currently not enforced by the compiler. Furthermore, it is not enforced
by the EVM, so a contract function that “claims” to be constant might still cause changes to the state.
• Types that do not occupy the full 32 bytes might contain “dirty higher order bits”. This is especially important
if you access msg.data - it poses a malleability risk: You can craft transactions that call a function f(uint8
x) with a raw byte argument of 0xff000001 and with 0x00000001. Both are fed to the contract and
both will look like the number 1 as far as x is concerned, but msg.data will be different, so if you use
sha3(msg.data) for anything, you will get different results.
5.5.2 Recommendations
Restrict the Amount of Ether
Restrict the amount of Ether (or other tokens) that can be stored in a smart contract. If your source code, the compiler
or the platform has a bug, these funds may be lost. If you want to limit your loss, limit the amount of Ether.
Keep it Small and Modular
Keep your contracts small and easily understandable. Single out unrelated functionality in other contracts or into
libraries. General recommendations about source code quality of course apply: Limit the amount of local variables,
the length of functions and so on. Document your functions so that others can see what your intention was and whether
it is different than what the code does.
5.5. Security Considerations 79

Use the Checks-Effects-Interactions Pattern
Most functions will first perform some checks (who called the function, are the arguments in range, did they send
enough Ether, does the person have tokens, etc.). These checks should be done first.
As the second step, if all checks passed, effects to the state variables of the current contract should be made. Interaction
with other contracts should be the very last step in any function.
Early contracts delayed some effects and waited for external function calls to return in a non-error state. This is often
a serious mistake because of the re-entrancy problem explained above.
Note that, also, calls to known contracts might in turn cause calls to unknown contracts, so it is probably better to just
always apply this pattern.
Include a Fail-Safe Mode
While making your system fully decentralised will remove any intermediary, it might be a good idea, especially for
new code, to include some kind of fail-safe mechanism:
You can add a function in your smart contract that performs some self-checks like “Has any Ether leaked?”, “Is the
sum of the tokens equal to the balance of the contract?” or similar things. Keep in mind that you cannot use too much
gas for that, so help through off-chain computations might be needed there.
If the self-check fails, the contract automatically switches into some kind of “failsafe” mode, which, for example,
disables most of the features, hands over control to a fixed and trusted third party or just converts the contract into a
simple “give me back my money” contract.
5.5.3 Formal Verification
Using formal verification, it is possible to perform an automated mathematical proof that your source code fulfills a
certain formal specification. The specification is still formal (just as the source code), but usually much simpler. There
is a prototype in Solidity that performs formal verification and it will be better documented soon.
Note that formal verification itself can only help you understand the difference between what you did (the specification)
and how you did it (the actual implementation). You still need to check whether the specification is what you wanted
and that you did not miss any unintended effects of it.
5.6 Style Guide
5.6.1 Introduction
This guide is intended to provide coding conventions for writing solidity code. This guide should be thought of as
an evolving document that will change over time as useful conventions are found and old conventions are rendered
obsolete.
Many projects will implement their own style guides. In the event of conflicts, project specific style guides take
precedence.
The structure and many of the recommendations within this style guide were taken from python’s pep8 style guide.
The goal of this guide is not to be the right way or the best way to write solidity code. The goal of this guide is
consistency. A quote from python’s pep8 captures this concept well.
A style guide is about consistency. Consistency with this style guide is important. Consistency within
a project is more important. Consistency within one module or function is most important. But most
importantly: know when to be inconsistent – sometimes the style guide just doesn’t apply. When in
doubt, use your best judgment. Look at other examples and decide what looks best. And don’t hesitate to
ask!
5.6.2 Code Layout
Indentation
Use 4 spaces per indentation level.
Tabs or Spaces
Spaces are the preferred indentation method.

Mixing tabs and spaces should be avoided.
Blank Lines
Surround top level declarations in solidity source with two blank lines.
Yes:
contract A {
...
}
contract B {
...
}
contract C {
...
}
No:
contract A {
...
}
contract B {
...
}
contract C {
...
}
Within a contract surround function declarations with a single blank line.

Blank lines may be omitted between groups of related one-liners (such as stub functions for an abstract contract)
Yes:
5.6. Style Guide 81

contract A {
function spam();
function ham();
}
contract B is A {
function spam() {
...
}
function ham() {
...
}
}
No:
contract A {
function spam() {
...
}
function ham() {
...
}
}
Source File Encoding
UTF-8 or ASCII encoding is preferred.
Imports
Import statements should always be placed at the top of the file.

Yes:
import "owned";
contract A {
...
}
contract B is owned {
...
}
No:
contract A {
...
}
import "owned";
contract B is owned {
...
}
Whitespace in Expressions
Avoid extraneous whitespace in the following situations:

Immediately inside parenthesis, brackets or braces, with the exception of single-line function declarations.
Yes:
spam(ham[1], Coin({name: "ham"}));
No:
spam( ham[ 1 ], Coin( { name: "ham" } ) );
Exception:
function singleLine() { spam(); }
Immediately before a comma, semicolon:

Yes:
function spam(uint i, Coin coin);
No:
function spam(uint i , Coin coin) ;
More than one space around an assignment or other operator to align with another:
Yes:
x = 1;
y = 2;
long_variable = 3;
No:
x = 1;
y = 2;
long_variable = 3;
Control Structures
The braces denoting the body of a contract, library, functions and structs should:
• open on the same line as the declaration
• close on their own line at the same indentation level as the beginning of the declaration.
• The opening brace should be proceeded by a single space.
Yes:
5.6. Style Guide 83

contract Coin {
struct Bank {
address owner;
uint balance;
}
}
No:
contract Coin
{
struct Bank {
address owner;
uint balance;
}
}
The same recommendations apply to the control structures if, else, while, and for.
Additionally there should be a single space between the control structures if, while, and for and the parenthetic
block representing the conditional, as well as a single space between the conditional parenthetic block and the opening
brace.
Yes:
if (...) {
...
}
for (...) {
...
}
No:
if (...)
{
...
}
while(...){
}
for (...) {
...;}
For control structures whose body contains a single statement, omitting the braces is ok if the statement is contained
on a single line.
Yes:
if (x < 10)
x += 1;
No:
if (x < 10)
someArray.push(Coin({
name: 'spam',
value: 42
}));
For if blocks which have an else or else if clause, the else should be placed on it’s own line following the
previous closing parenthesis. The parenthesis for the else block should follow the same rules as the other conditional
control structures.
Yes:
if (x < 3) {
x += 1;
}
else {
x -= 1;
}
if (x < 3)
x += 1;
else
x -= 1;
No:
if (x < 3) {
x += 1;
} else {
x -= 1;
}
Function Declaration
For short function declarations, it is recommended for the opening brace of the function body to be kept on the same
line as the function declaration.
The closing brace should be at the same indentation level as the function declaration.
The opening brace should be preceeded by a single space.
Yes:
function increment(uint x) returns (uint) {
return x + 1;
}
function increment(uint x) public onlyowner returns (uint) {

return x + 1;
}
No:
function increment(uint x) returns (uint)
{
return x + 1;
}
function increment(uint x) returns (uint){

return x + 1;
}

return x + 1;
5.6. Style Guide 85


return x + 1;}
The visibility modifiers for a function should come before any custom modifiers.
Yes:
function kill() public onlyowner {
}
No:
function kill() onlyowner public {
}
For long function declarations, it is recommended to drop each arguent onto it’s own line at the same indentation level
as the function body. The closing parenthesis and opening bracket should be placed on their own line as well at the
same indentation level as the function declaration.
Yes:
function thisFunctionHasLotsOfArguments(
address a,
address b,
address c,
address d,
address e,
address f
) {
doSomething();
}
No:
function thisFunctionHasLotsOfArguments(address a, address b, address c,
address d, address e, address f) {
doSomething();
}
function thisFunctionHasLotsOfArguments(address a,
address b,
address c,
address d,
address e,
address f) {
doSomething();
}
function thisFunctionHasLotsOfArguments(
address a,
address b,
address c,
address d,
address e,
address f) {
doSomething();
}
If a long function declaration has modifiers, then each modifier should be dropped to it’s own line.
Yes:
function thisFunctionNameIsReallyLong(address x, address y, address z)
public
onlyowner
priced
returns (address)
{
doSomething();
}
function thisFunctionNameIsReallyLong(
address x,
address y,
address z,
)
public
onlyowner
priced
returns (address)
{
doSomething();
}
No:
public
onlyowner
priced
returns (address) {
doSomething();
}

public onlyowner priced returns (address)
{
doSomething();
}

public
onlyowner
priced
returns (address) {
doSomething();
}
For constructor functions on inherited contracts whose bases require arguments, it is recommended to drop the base
constructors onto new lines in the same manner as modifiers if the function declaration is long or hard to read.
Yes:
contract A is B, C, D {
function A(uint param1, uint param2, uint param3, uint param4, uint param5)
5.6. Style Guide 87

B(param1)
C(param2, param3)
D(param4)
{
// do something with param5
}
}
No:
B(param1)
C(param2, param3)
D(param4)
{
}
}
B(param1)
C(param2, param3)
D(param4) {
}
}
When declaring short functions with a single statement, it is permissible to do it on a single line.
Permissible:
function shortFunction() { doSomething(); }
These guidelines for function declarations are intended to improve readability. Authors should use their best judgement
as this guide does not try to cover all possible permutations for function declarations.
Mappings
TODO
Variable Declarations
Declarations of array variables should not have a space between the type and the brackets.
Yes:
uint[] x;
No:
uint [] x;
Other Recommendations
• Strings should be quoted with double-quotes instead of single-quotes.
Yes:
str = "foo";
str = "Hamlet says, 'To be or not to be...'";
No:
str = 'bar';
str = '"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." -Oscar Wilde';
• Surround operators with a single space on either side.

Yes:
x = 3;
x = 100 / 10;
x += 3 + 4;
x |= y && z;
No:
x=3;
x = 100/10;
x += 3+4;
x |= y&&z;
• Operators with a higher priority than others can exclude surrounding whitespace in order to denote precedence.
This is meant to allow for improved readability for complex statement. You should always use the same amount
of whitespace on either side of an operator:
Yes:
x = 2**3 + 5;
x = 2*y + 3*z;
x = (a+b) * (a-b);
No:
x = 2** 3 + 5;
x = y+z;
x +=1;
5.6.3 Naming Conventions
Naming conventions are powerful when adopted and used broadly. The use of different conventions can convey
significant meta information that would otherwise not be immediately available.
The naming recommendations given here are intended to improve the readability, and thus they are not rules, but rather
guidelines to try and help convey the most information through the names of things.
Lastly, consistency within a codebase should always supercede any conventions outlined in this document.
Naming Styles
To avoid confusion, the following names will be used to refer to different naming styles.
• b (single lowercase letter)
• B (single uppercase letter)
5.6. Style Guide 89

• lowercase
• lower_case_with_underscores
• UPPERCASE
• UPPER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES
• CapitalizedWords (or CapWords)
• mixedCase (differs from CapitalizedWords by initial lowercase character!)
• Capitalized_Words_With_Underscores
Note: When using abbreviations in CapWords, capitalize all the letters of the abbreviation. Thus HTTPServerError
is better than HttpServerError.
Names to Avoid
• l - Lowercase letter el
• O - Uppercase letter oh
• I - Uppercase letter eye
Never use any of these for single letter variable names. They are often indistinguishable from the numerals one and
zero.
Contract and Library Names
Contracts should be named using the CapWords style.
Events
Events should be named using the CapWords style.
Function Names
Functions should use mixedCase.
Function Arguments
When writing library functions that operate on a custom struct, the struct should be the first argument and should
always be named self.
Local and State Variables
Use mixedCase.
Constants
Constants should be named with all capital letters with underscores separating words. (for example:MAX_BLOCKS)
Modifiers
Use mixedCase.
Avoiding Collisions
• single_trailing_underscore_
This convention is suggested when the desired name collides with that of a built-in or otherwise reserved name.
General Recommendations
TODO
5.7 Common Patterns
5.7.1 Withdrawal from Contracts
The recommended method of sending funds after an effect is using the withdrawal pattern. Although the most intuitive
method of sending Ether, as a result of an effect, is a direct send call, this is not recommended as it introduces a
potential security risk. You may read more about this on the Security Considerations page.
This is an example of the withdrawal pattern in practice in a contract where the goal is to send the most money to the
contract in order to become the “richest”, inspired by King of the Ether.
In the following contract, if you are usurped as the richest, you will recieve the funds of the person who has gone on
to become the new richest.
contract WithdrawalContract {
address public richest;
uint public mostSent;
mapping (address => uint) pendingWithdrawals;
function WithdrawalContract() {
richest = msg.sender;
mostSent = msg.value;
}
function becomeRichest() returns (bool) {

if (msg.value > mostSent) {
pendingWithdrawals[richest] += msg.value;
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
function withdraw() returns (bool) {

uint amount = pendingWithdrawals[msg.sender];
// Remember to zero the pending refund before
5.7. Common Patterns 91

// sending to prevent re-entrancy attacks

pendingWithdrawals[msg.sender] = 0;
if (msg.sender.send(amount)) {
return true;
}
else {
pendingWithdrawals[msg.sender] = amount;
return false;
}
}
}
This is as opposed to the more intuitive sending pattern.

contract SendContract {
address public richest;
uint public mostSent;
function SendContract() {
}
function becomeRichest() returns (bool) {

if (msg.value > mostSent) {
// Check if call succeeds to prevent an attacker
// from trapping the previous person's funds in
// this contract through a callstack attack
if (!richest.send(msg.value)) {
throw;
}
return true;
}
else {
return false;
}
}
}
Notice that, in this example, an attacker could trap the contract into an unusable state by causing richest to be the
address of a contract that has a fallback function which consumes more than the 2300 gas stipend. That way, whenever
send is called to deliver funds to the “poisoned” contract, it will cause execution to always fail because there will not
be enough gas to finish the execution of the fallback function.
5.7.2 Restricting Access
Restricting access is a common pattern for contracts. Note that you can never restrict any human or computer from
reading the content of your transactions or your contract’s state. You can make it a bit harder by using encryption, but
if your contract is supposed to read the data, so will everyone else.
You can restrict read access to your contract’s state by other contracts. That is actually the default unless you declare
make your state variables public.
Furthermore, you can restrict who can make modifications to your contract’s state or call your contract’s functions and
this is what this page is about.
The use of function modifiers makes these restrictions highly readable.

contract AccessRestriction {
// These will be assigned at the construction
// phase, where `msg.sender` is the account
// creating this contract.
address public owner = msg.sender;
uint public creationTime = now;
// Modifiers can be used to change

// the body of a function.
// If this modifier is used, it will
// prepend a check that only passes
// if the function is called from
// a certain address.
modifier onlyBy(address _account)
{
if (msg.sender != _account)
throw;
// Do not forget the "_"! It will
// be replaced by the actual function
// body when the modifier is invoked.
_
}
/// M ake `_newOwner` the new owner of this

/// contract.
function changeOwner(address _newOwner)
onlyBy(owner)
{
owner = _newOwner;
}
modifier onlyAfter(uint _time) {

if (now < _time) throw;
_
}
/// Erase ownership information.

/// M ay only be called 6 weeks after
/// the contract has been created.
function disown()
onlyBy(owner)
onlyAfter(creationTime + 6 weeks)
{
delete owner;
}
// This modifier requires a certain

// fee being associated with a function call.
// If the caller sent too much, he or she is
// refunded, but only after the function body.
// This is dangerous, because if the function
// uses `return` explicitly, this will not be
// done! This behavior will be fixed in Version 0.4.0.
modifier costs(uint _amount) {
if (msg.value < _amount)
throw;
_

if (msg.value > _amount)

msg.sender.send(msg.value - _amount);
}
function forceOwnerChange(address _newOwner)

costs(200 ether)
{
owner = _newOwner;
// just some example condition
if (uint(owner) & 0 == 1)
// in this case, overpaid fees will not
// be refunded
return;
// otherwise, refund overpaid fees
}
}
A more specialised way in which access to function calls can be restricted will be discussed in the next example.
5.7.3 State Machine
Contracts often act as a state machine, which means that they have certain stages in which they behave differently or
in which different functions can be called. A function call often ends a stage and transitions the contract into the next
stage (especially if the contract models interaction). It is also common that some stages are automatically reached at
a certain point in time.
An example for this is a blind auction contract which starts in the stage “accepting blinded bids”, then transitions to
“revealing bids” which is ended by “determine auction autcome”.
Function modifiers can be used in this situation to model the states and guard against incorrect usage of the contract.
Example
In the following example, the modifier atStage ensures that the function can only be called at a certain stage.
Automatic timed transitions are handled by the modifier timeTransitions, which should be used for all functions.
Note: Modifier Order Matters. If atStage is combined with timedTransitions, make sure that you mention it after
the latter, so that the new stage is taken into account.
Finally, the modifier transitionNext can be used to automatically go to the next stage when the function finishes.
Note: Modifier May be Skipped. Since modifiers are applied by simply replacing code and not by using a function
call, the code in the transitionNext modifier can be skipped if the function itself uses return. If you want to do that,
make sure to call nextStage manually from those functions. With version 0.4.0 (unreleased), modifier code will run
even if the function explicitly returns.
contract StateMachine {
enum Stages {
AcceptingBlindedBids,
RevealBids,
AnotherStage,
AreWeDoneYet,
Finished
}
// This is the current stage.

Stages public stage = Stages.AcceptingBlindedBids;
uint public creationTime = now;
modifier atStage(Stages _stage) {

if (stage != _stage) throw;
_
}
function nextStage() internal {

stage = Stages(uint(stage) + 1);
}
// Perform timed transitions. Be sure to mention

// this modifier first, otherwise the guards
// will not take the new stage into account.
modifier timedTransitions() {
if (stage == Stages.AcceptingBlindedBids &&
now >= creationTime + 10 days)
nextStage();
if (stage == Stages.RevealBids &&
now >= creationTime + 12 days)
nextStage();
// The other stages transition by transaction
_
}
// Order of the modifiers matters here!

function bid()
timedTransitions
atStage(Stages.AcceptingBlindedBids)
{
// We will not implement that here
}
function reveal()
timedTransitions
atStage(Stages.RevealBids)
{
}
// This modifier goes to the next stage

// after the function is done.
// If you use `return` in the function,
// `nextStage` will not be called
// automatically.
modifier transitionNext()
{
_
nextStage();
}
function g()
timedTransitions

atStage(Stages.AnotherStage)
transitionNext
{
// If you want to use `return` here,
// you have to call `nextStage()` manually.
}
function h()
timedTransitions
atStage(Stages.AreWeDoneYet)
transitionNext
{
}
function i()
timedTransitions
atStage(Stages.Finished)
{
}
}
5.8 Frequently Asked Questions
This list was originally compiled by fivedogit.
5.8.1 Basic Questions
What is Solidity?
Solidity is the DEV-created (i.e. Ethereum Foundation-created), Javascript-inspired language that can be used to
create smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. There are other languages you can use as well (LLL, Serpent, etc).
The main points in favour of Solidity is that it is statically typed and offers many advanced features like inheritance,
libraries, complex user-defined types and a bytecode optimizer.
Solidity contracts can be compiled a few different ways (see below) and the resulting output can be cut/pasted into a
geth console to deploy them to the Ethereum blockchain.
There are some contract examples by fivedogit and there should be a test contract for every single feature of Solidity.
How do I compile contracts?
Probably the fastest way is the online compiler.

You can also use the solc binary which comes with cpp-ethereum to compile contracts or an emerging option is to
use Mix, the IDE.
Create and publish the most basic contract possible
A quite simple contract is the greeter
Is it possible to do something on a specific block number? (e.g. publish a contract or execute a

transaction)
Transactions are not guaranteed to happen on the next block or any future specific block, since it is up to the miners
to include transactions and not up to the submitter of the transaction. This applies to function calls/transactions and
contract creation transactions.
If you want to schedule future calls of your contract, you can use the alarm clock.
What is the transaction “payload”?
This is just the bytecode “data” sent along with the request.
Is there a decompiler available?
There is no decompiler to Solidity. This is in principle possible to some degree, but for example variable names will
be lost and great effort will be necessary to make it look similar to the original source code.
Bytecode can be decompiled to opcodes, a service that is provided by several blockchain explorers.
Contracts on the blockchain should have their original source code published if they are to be used by third parties.
Does selfdestruct() free up space in the blockchain?
It removes the contract bytecode and storage from the current block into the future, but since the blockchain stores
every single block (i.e. all history), this will not actually free up space on full/archive nodes.
Create a contract that can be killed and return funds
First, a word of warning: Killing contracts sounds like a good idea, because “cleaning up” is always good, but as seen
above, it does not really clean up. Furthermore, if Ether is sent to removed contracts, the Ether will be forever lost.
If you want to deactivate your contracts, it is preferable to disable them by changing some internal state which causes
all functions to throw. This will make it impossible to use the contract and ether sent to the contract will be returned
automatically.
Now to answering the question: Inside a constructor, msg.sender is the creator. Save it. Then
selfdestruct(creator); to kill and return funds.
example
Note that if you import "mortal" at the top of your contracts and declare contract SomeContract
is mortal { ... and compile with a compiler that already has it (which includes browser-
solidity), then kill() is taken care of for you. Once a contract is “mortal”, then you can
contractname.kill.sendTransaction({from:eth.coinbase}), just the same as my examples.
Store Ether in a contract
The trick is to create the contract with {from:someaddress, value: web3.toWei(3,"ether")...}

See endowment_retriever.sol.
5.8. Frequently Asked Questions 97

Use a non-constant function (req sendTransaction) to increment a variable in a contract
See value_incrementer.sol.
Get contract address in Solidity
Short answer: The global variable this is the contract address.

See basic_info_getter.
Long answer: this is a variable representing the current contract. Its type is the type of the contract. Since any
contract type basically inherits from the address type, this is always convertible to address and in this case
contains its own address.
What is the difference between a function marked constant and one that is not?
constant functions can perform some action and return a value, but cannot change state (this is not yet enforced
by the compiler). In other words, a constant function cannot save or update any variables within the contract or wider
blockchain. These functions are called using c.someFunction(...) from geth or any other web3.js environment.
“non-constant” functions (those lacking the constant specifier) must be called with
c.someMethod.sendTransaction({from:eth.accounts[x], gas: 1000000}); That is,
because they can change state, they have to have a gas payment sent along to get the work done.
Get a contract to return its funds to you (not using selfdestruct(...)).
This example demonstrates how to send funds from a contract to an address.

See endowment_retriever.
What is a mapping and how do we use them?
A mapping is very similar to a K->V hashmap. If you have a state variable of type mapping (string -> uint)
x;, then you can access the value by x["somekeystring"].
How can I get the length of a mapping?
Mappings are a rather low-level data structure. It does not store the keys and it is not possible to know which or how
many values are “set”. Actually, all values to all possible keys are set by default, they are just initialised with the zero
value.
In this sense, the attribute length for a mapping does not really apply.
If you want to have a “sized mapping”, you can use the iterable mapping (see below) or just a dynamically-sized array
of structs.
Are mapping‘s iterable?
Mappings themselves are not iterable, but you can use a higher-level datastructure on top of it, for example the iterable
mapping.
Can I put arrays inside of a mapping? How do I make a mapping of a mapping?
Mappings are already syntactically similar to arrays as they are, therefore it doesn’t make much sense to store an array
in them. Rather what you should do is create a mapping of a mapping.
An example of this would be:
contract C {
struct myStruct {
uint someNumber;
string someString;
}
mapping(uint => mapping(string => myStruct)) myDynamicMapping;
function storeInMapping() {
myDynamicMapping[1]["Foo"] = myStruct(2, "Bar");
}
}
Can you return an array or a string from a solidity function call?
Yes. See array_receiver_and_returner.sol.

What is problematic, though, is returning any variably-sized data (e.g. a variably-sized array like uint[]) from a
fuction called from within Solidity. This is a limitation of the EVM and will be solved with the next protocol update.
Returning variably-sized data as part of an external transaction or call is fine.
How do you represent double/float in Solidity?
This is not yet possible.
Is it possible to in-line initialize an array like so: string[] myarray = ["a", "b"];
Yes. However it should be noted that this currently only works with statically sized memory arrays. You can even
create an inline memory array in the return statement. Pretty cool, huh?
Example:
contract C {
function f() returns (uint8[5]) {
string[4] memory adaArr = ["This", "is", "an", "array"];
return ([1, 2, 3, 4, 5]);
}
}
What are event‘s and why do we need them?
Let us suppose that you need a contract to alert the outside world when something happens. The contract can fire an
event, which can be listened to from web3 (inside geth or a web application). The main advantage of events is that
they are stored in a special way on the blockchain so that it is very easy to search for them.

What are the different function visibilities?
The visibility specifiers do not only change the visibility but also the way functions can be called. In general, functions
in the same contract can also be called internally (which is cheaper and allows for memory types to be passed by
reference). This is done if you just use f(1,2). If you use this.f(1,2) or otherContract.f(1,2), the
function is called externally.
Internal function calls have the advantage that you can use all Solidity types as parameters, but you have to stick to the
simpler ABI types for external calls.
• external: all, only externally
• public: all (this is the default), externally and internally
• internal: only this contract and contracts deriving from it, only internally
• private: only this contract, only internally
Do contract constructors have to be publicly visible?
You can use the visibility specifiers, but they do not yet have any effect. The constructor is removed from the contract
code once it is deployed,
Can a contract have multiple constructors?
No, a contract can have only one constructor.

More specifically, it can only have one function whose name matches that of the constructor.
Having multiple constructors with different number of arguments or argument types, as it is possible in other languages
is not allowed in Solidity.
Is a constructor required?
No. If there is no constructor, a generic one without arguments and no actions will be used.
Are timestamps (now, block.timestamp) reliable?
This depends on what you mean by “reliable”. In general, they are supplied by miners and are therefore vulnerable.
Unless someone really messes up the blockchain or the clock on your computer, you can make the following assump-
tions:
You publish a transaction at a time X, this transaction contains same code that calls now and is included in a block
whose timestamp is Y and this block is included into the canonical chain (published) at a time Z.
The value of now will be identical to Y and X <= Y <= Z.
Never use now or block.hash as a source of randomness, unless you know what you are doing!
Can a contract function return a struct?
Yes, but only in internal function calls.

If I return an enum, I only get integer values in web3.js. How to get the named values?
Enums are not supported by the ABI, they are just supported by Solidity. You have to do the mapping yourself for
now, we might provide some help later.
What is the deal with function () { ... } inside Solidity contracts? How can a function not
have a name?
This function is called “fallback function” and it is called when someone just sent Ether to the contract without
providing any data or if someone messed up the types so that they tried to call a function that does not exist.
The default behaviour (if no fallback function is explicitly given) in these situations is to just accept the call and do
nothing. This is desireable in many cases, but should only be used if there is a way to pull out Ether from a contract.
If the contract is not meant to receive Ether with simple transfers, you should implement the fallback function as
function() { throw; }
this will cause all transactions to this contract that do not call an existing function to be reverted, so that all Ether is
sent back.
Another use of the fallback function is to e.g. register that your contract received ether by using an event.
Attention: If you implement the fallback function take care that it uses as little gas as possible, because send() will
only supply a limited amount.
Is it possible to pass arguments to the fallback function?
The fallback function cannot take parameters.

Under special circumstances, you can send data. If you take care that none of the other functions is invoked, you can
access the data by msg.data.
Can state variables be initialized in-line?
Yes, this is possible for all types (even for structs). However, for arrays it should be noted that you must declare them
as static memory arrays.
Examples:
contract C {
struct S {
uint a;
uint b;
}
S public x = S(1, 2);

string name = "Ada";
string[4] memory adaArr = ["This", "is", "an", "array"];
}
contract D {
C c = new C();
}

What is the modifier keyword?
Modifiers are a way to prepend or append code to a function in order to add guards, initialisation or cleanup function-
ality in a concise way.
For examples, see the features.sol.
How do structs work?
See struct_and_for_loop_tester.sol.
How do for loops work?
Very similar to JavaScript. There is one point to watch out for, though:
If you use for (var i = 0; i < a.length; i ++) { a[i] = i; }, then the type of i will be in-
ferred only from 0, whose type is uint8. This means that if a has more than 255 elements, your loop will not
terminate because i can only hold values up to 255.
Better use for (uint i = 0; i < a.length...
See struct_and_for_loop_tester.sol.
What character set does Solidity use?
Solidity is character set agnostic concerning strings in the source code, although UTF-8 is recommended. Identifiers
(variables, functions, ...) can only use ASCII.
What are some examples of basic string manipulation (substring, indexOf, charAt, etc)?
There are some string utility functions at stringUtils.sol which will be extended in the future. In addition, Arachnid
has written solidity-stringutils.
For now, if you want to modify a string (even when you only want to know its length), you should always convert it to
a bytes first:
contract C {
string s;
function append(byte c) {
bytes(s).push(c);
}
function set(uint i, byte c) {

bytes(s)[i] = c;
}
}
Can I concatenate two strings?
You have to do it manually for now.

Why is the low-level function .call() less favorable than instantiating a contract with a variable
(ContractB b;) and executing its functions (b.doSomething();)?
If you use actual functions, the compiler will tell you if the types or your arguments do not match, if the function does
not exist or is not visible and it will do the packing of the arguments for you.
See ping.sol and pong.sol.
Is unused gas automatically refunded?
Yes and it is immediate, i.e. done as part of the transaction.
When returning a value of say uint type, is it possible to return an undefined or “null”-like value?
This is not possible, because all types use up the full value range.
You have the option to throw on error, which will also revert the whole transaction, which might be a good idea if
you ran into an unexpected situation.
If you do not want to throw, you can return a pair:
contract C {
uint[] counters;
function getCounter(uint index)

returns (uint counter, bool error) {
if (index >= counters.length) return (0, true);
else return (counters[index], false);
}
function checkCounter(uint index) {

var (counter, error) = getCounter(index);
if (error) {
...
}
else {
...
}
}
}
Are comments included with deployed contracts and do they increase deployment gas?
No, everything that is not needed for execution is removed during compilation. This includes, among others, com-
ments, variable names and type names.
What happens if you send ether along with a function call to a contract?
It gets added to the total balance of the contract, just like when you send ether when creating a contract.
Is it possible to get a tx receipt for a transaction executed contract-to-contract?
No, a function call from one contract to another does not create its own transaction, you have to look in the overall
transaction. This is also the reason why several block explorer do not show Ether sent between contracts correctly.

What is the memory keyword? What does it do?
The Ethereum Virtual Machine has three areas where it can store items.
The first is “storage”, where all the contract state variables reside. Every contract has its own storage and it is persistent
between function calls and quite expensive to use.
The second is “memory”, this is used to hold temporary values. It is erased between (external) function calls and is
cheaper to use.
The third one is the stack, which is used to hold small local variables. It is almost free to use, but can only hold a
limited amount of values.
For almost all types, you cannot specify where they should be stored, because they are copied everytime they are used.
The types where the so-called storage location is important are structs and arrays. If you e.g. pass such variables in
function calls, their data is not copied if it can stay in memory or stay in storage. This means that you can modify their
content in the called function and these modifications will still be visible in the caller.
There are defaults for the storage location depending on which type of variable it concerns:
• state variables are always in storage
• function arguments are always in memory
• local variables always reference storage
Example:
contract C {
uint[] data1;
uint[] data2;
function appendOne() {
append(data1);
}
function appendTwo() {
append(data2);
}
function append(uint[] storage d) {

d.push(1);
}
}
The function append can work both on data1 and data2 and its modifications will be stored permanently. If
you remove the storage keyword, the default is to use memory for function arguments. This has the effect that
at the point where append(data1) or append(data2) is called, an independent copy of the state variable is
created in memory and append operates on this copy (which does not support .push - but that is another issue).
The modifications to this independent copy do not carry back to data1 or data2.
A common mistake is to declare a local variable and assume that it will be created in memory, although it will be
created in storage:
/// THIS CON TRACT CON TAIN S AN ERROR

contract C {
uint someVariable;
uint[] data;
function f() {
uint[] x;

x.push(2);
data = x;
}
}
The type of the local variable x is uint[] storage, but since storage is not dynamically allocated, it has to be
assigned from a state variable before it can be used. So no space in storage will be allocated for x, but instead it
functions only as an alias for a pre-existing variable in storage.
What will happen is that the compiler interprets x as a storage pointer and will make it point to the storage slot 0 by
default. This has the effect that someVariable (which resides at storage slot 0) is modified by x.push(2).
The correct way to do this is the following:
contract C {
uint someVariable;
uint[] data;
function f() {
uint[] x = data;
x.push(2);
}
}
Can a regular (i.e. non-contract) ethereum account be closed permanently like a contract can?
No. Non-contract accounts “exist” as long as the private key is known by someone or can be generated in some way.
What is the difference between bytes and byte[]?
bytes is usually more efficient: When used as arguments to functions (i.e. in CALLDATA) or in memory, every
single element of a byte[] is padded to 32 bytes which wastes 31 bytes per element.
Is it possible to send a value while calling an overloaded function?
It’s a known missing feature. https://www.pivotaltracker.com/story/show/92020468 as part of

https://www.pivotaltracker.com/n/projects/1189488
Best solution currently see is to introduce a special case for gas and value and just re-check whether they are present
at the point of overload resolution.
5.8.2 Advanced Questions
How do you get a random number in a contract? (Implement a self-returning gambling contract.)
Getting randomness right is often the crucial part in a crypto project and most failures result from bad random number
generators.
If you do not want it to be safe, you build something similar to the coin flipper but otherwise, rather use a contract that
supplies randomness, like the RANDAO.

Get return value from non-constant function from another contract
The key point is that the calling contract needs to know about the function it intends to call.
See ping.sol and pong.sol.
Get contract to do something when it is first mined
Use the constructor. Anything inside it will be executed when the contract is first mined.
See replicator.sol.
Can a contract create another contract?
Yes, see replicator.sol.

Note that the full code of the created contract has to be included in the creator contract. This also means that cyclic
creations are not possible (because the contract would have to contain its own code) - at least not in a general way.
How do you create 2-dimensional arrays?
See 2D_array.sol.
Note that filling a 10x10 square of uint8 + contract creation took more than 800,000 gas at the time of this writing.
17x17 took 2,000,000 gas. With the limit at 3.14 million... well, there’s a pretty low ceiling for what you can create
right now.
Note that merely “creating” the array is free, the costs are in filling it.
Note2: Optimizing storage access can pull the gas costs down considerably, because 32 uint8 values can be stored
in a single slot. The problem is that these optimizations currently do not work across loops and also have a problem
with bounds checking. You might get much better results in the future, though.
What does p.recipient.call.value(p.amount)(p.data) do?
Every external function call in Solidity can be modified in two ways:

1. You can add Ether together with the call
2. You can limit the amount of gas available to the call
This is done by “calling a function on the function”:
f.gas(2).value(20)() calls the modified function f and thereby sending 20 Wei and limiting the gas to 2 (so
this function call will most likely go out of gas and return your 20 Wei).
In the above example, the low-level function call is used to invoke another contract with p.data as payload and
p.amount Wei is sent with that call.
What happens to a struct‘s mapping when copying over a struct?
This is a very interesting question. Suppose that we have a contract field set up like such:

struct user {
mapping(string => address) usedContracts;
}
function somefunction {
user user1;
user1.usedContracts["Hello"] = "World";
user user2 = user1;
}
In this case, the mapping of the struct being copied over into the userList is ignored as there is no “list of mapped
keys”. Therefore it is not possible to find out which values should be copied over.
How do I initialize a contract with only a specific amount of wei?
Currently the approach is a little ugly, but there is little that can be done to improve it. In the case of a contract
A calling a new instance of contract B, parentheses have to be used around new B because B.value would
refer to a member of B called value. You will need to make sure that you have both contracts aware of each other’s
presence. In this example:
contract B {}
contract A {
address child;
function test() {
child = (new B).value(10)(); //construct a new B with 10 wei
}
}
Can a contract function accept a two-dimensional array?
This is not yet implemented for external calls and dynamic arrays - you can only use one level of dynamic arrays.
What is the relationship between bytes32 and string? Why is it that bytes32 somevar =
"stringliteral"; works and what does the saved 32-byte hex value mean?
The type bytes32 can hold 32 (raw) bytes. In the assignment bytes32 samevar = "stringliteral";,
the string literal is interpreted in its raw byte form and if you inspect somevar and see a 32-byte hex value, this is
just "stringliteral" in hex.
The type bytes is similar, only that it can change its length.
Finally, string is basically identical to bytes only that it is assumed to hold the UTF-8 encoding of a real string.
Since string stores the data in UTF-8 encoding it is quite expensive to compute the number of characters in the
string (the encoding of some characters takes more than a single byte). Because of that, string s; s.length
is not yet supported and not even index access s[2]. But if you want to access the low-level byte encoding of the
string, you can use bytes(s).length and bytes(s)[2] which will result in the number of bytes in the UTF-8
encoding of the string (not the number of characters) and the second byte (not character) of the UTF-8 encoded string,
respectively.

Can a contract pass an array (static size) or string or bytes (dynamic size) to another contract?
Sure. Take care that if you cross the memory / storage boundary, independent copies will be created:
contract C {
uint[20] x;
function f() {
g(x);
h(x);
}
function g(uint[20] y) {
y[2] = 3;
}
function h(uint[20] storage y) {

y[3] = 4;
}
}
The call to g(x) will not have an effect on x because it needs to create an independent copy of the storage value in
memory (the default storage location is memory). On the other hand, h(x) successfully modifies x because only a
reference and not a copy is passed.
Sometimes, when I try to change the length of an array with ex: arrayname.length = 7; I get a
compiler error Value must be an lvalue. Why?
You can resize a dynamic array in storage (i.e. an array declared at the contract level) with arrayname.length =
<some new length>;. If you get the “lvalue” error, you are probably doing one of two things wrong.
1. You might be trying to resize an array in “memory”, or
2. You might be trying to resize a non-dynamic array.
int8[] memory memArr; // Case 1
memArr.length++; // illegal
int8[5] storageArr; // Case 2
somearray.length++; // legal
int8[5] storage storageArr2; // Explicit case 2
somearray2.length++; // legal
Important note: In Solidity, array dimensions are declared backwards from the way you might be used to declaring
them in C or Java, but they are access as in C or Java.
For example, int8[][5] somearray; are 5 dynamic int8 arrays.
The reason for this is that T[5] is always an array of 5 T‘s, no matter whether T itself is an array or not (this is not
the case in C or Java).
Is it possible to return an array of strings (string[]) from a Solidity function?
Not yet, as this requires two levels of dynamic arrays (string is a dynamic array itself).

If you issue a call for an array, it is possible to retrieve the whole array? Or must you write a helper
function for that?
The automatic accessor function for a public state variable of array type only returns individual elements. If you want
to return the complete array, you have to manually write a function to do that.
What could have happened if an account has storage value(s) but no code? Example:
http://test.ether.camp/account/5f740b3a43fbb99724ce93a879805f4dc89178b5
The last thing a constructor does is returning the code of the contract. The gas costs for this depend on the length
of the code and it might be that the supplied gas is not enough. This situation is the only one where an “out of gas”
exception does not revert changes to the state, i.e. in this case the initialisation of the state variables.
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Subtleties
After a successful CREATE operation’s sub-execution, if the operation returns x, 5 * len(x) gas is subtracted from the
remaining gas before the contract is created. If the remaining gas is less than 5 * len(x), then no gas is subtracted, the
code of the created contract becomes the empty string, but this is not treated as an exceptional condition - no reverts
happen.
How do I use .send()?
If you want to send 20 Ether from a contract to the address x, you use x.send(20 ether);. Here, x can be a
plain address or a contract. If the contract already explicitly defines a function send (and thus overwrites the special
function), you can use address(x).send(20 ether);.
Note that the call to send may fail in certain conditions, such as if you have insufficient funds, so you should always
check the return value. send returns true if the send was successful and false otherwise.
What does the following strange check do in the Custom Token contract?
if (balanceOf[_to] + _value < balanceOf[_to])

throw;
Integers in Solidity (and most other machine-related programming languages) are restricted to a certain range. For
uint256, this is 0 up to 2**256 - 1. If the result of some operation on those numbers does not fit inside this
range, it is truncated. These truncations can have serious consequences, so code like the one above is necessary to
avoid certain attacks.
More Questions?
If you have more questions or your question is not answered here, please talk to us on gitter or file an issue.


Index
A C
abstract contract, 66 C3 linearization, 66
access call, 33
restricting, 92 callcode, 16, 33, 66
accessor cast, 41
function, 58 coding style, 80
account, 14 coin, 13
addmod, 44, 75 coinbase, 43, 75
address, 14, 33 commandline compiler, 73
anonymous, 76 comment, 30
array, 36, 37 common subexpression elimination, 72
allocating, 37 compiler
length, 38 commandline, 73
literals, 38 constant, 61, 76
push, 38 constant propagation, 72
asm, 50 constructor
assembly, 50 arguments, 57
assignment, 41, 47 continue, 45
destructuring, 47 contract, 30, 56
auction abstract, 66
blind, 21 base, 63
open, 21 creation, 56
contract creation, 16
B contracts
balance, 14, 33, 44, 75 creating, 46
ballot, 18 cryptography, 44, 75
base
constructor, 65 D
base class, 63 data, 43, 75
blind auction, 21 days, 42
block, 14, 43, 75 declarations, 48
number, 43, 75 default value, 48
timestamp, 43, 75 delegatecall, 16, 33, 66
bool, 32 delete, 41
break, 45 deriving, 63
byte array, 34 difficulty, 43, 75
bytes, 35
bytes32, 34 E
ecrecover, 44, 75
else, 45
111
enum, 30, 35 location, 36

escrow, 26 log, 16, 63
ether, 42 lvalue, 41
ethereum virtual machine, 14
event, 13, 30, 61 M
evm, 14 mapping, 12, 40, 71
evmasm, 50 memory, 15, 36
exception, 49 message call, 15
external, 58, 76 minutes, 42
modifiers, 76
F msg, 43, 75
fallback function, 61 mulmod, 44, 75
false, 32
finney, 42 N
fixed, 34 natspec, 30
fixed point number, 34 new, 37, 46
for, 45 now, 43, 75
function, 30 number, 43, 75
accessor, 58
call, 15, 45 O
external, 45 open auction, 21
fallback, 61 optimizer, 72
internal, 45 origin, 43, 75
modifier, 30, 59, 92, 94
P
G precedence, 74
gas, 15, 43, 75 private, 58, 76
gas price, 15, 43, 75 public, 58, 76
goto, 45 purchase, 26
push, 38
H
hours, 42 R
reference type, 36
I remote purchase, 26
if, 45 return, 45
import, 28 ripemd160, 44, 75
indexed, 76
inheritance, 63 S
multiple, 66
scoping, 48
inline
seconds, 42
arrays, 38
selfdestruct, 16, 44, 75
instruction, 15
send, 33, 44, 75
int, 32
sender, 43, 75
integer, 32
set, 67
internal, 58, 76
sha256, 44, 75
L sha3, 44, 75
solc, 73
length, 38
source file, 28
library, 16, 66, 69
source mappings, 72
linearization, 66
stack, 15
linker, 73
state machine, 94
literal, 34, 35
state variable, 30, 71
rational, 34
storage, 14, 15, 36, 71
string, 35
112 Index
string, 35
struct, 30, 36, 39
style, 80
subcurrency, 11
super, 44, 75
switch, 45
szabo, 42
T
this, 44, 75
throw, 49
time, 42
timestamp, 43, 75
transaction, 13, 14
true, 32
type, 32
conversion, 41
deduction, 42
reference, 36
struct, 39
value, 32
U
ufixed, 34
uint, 32
using for, 67, 69
V
value, 43, 75
value type, 32
var, 42
visibility, 58, 76
voting, 18
W
weeks, 42
wei, 42
while, 45
withdrawal, 91
Y
years, 42
Index 113

Solidity Documentation

Uploaded by

Solidity Documentation

Uploaded by

Solidity Documentation

August 22, 2016

2 Available Solidity Integrations 5

4 Chapter 1. Useful links

Available Solidity Integrations

6 Chapter 2. Available Solidity Integrations

• Solidity REPL Try Solidity instantly with a command-line Solidity console.

8 Chapter 3. Solidity Tools

10 Chapter 4. Language Documentation

Keyword Index, Search Page

5.1 Introduction to Smart Contracts

5.1.1 A Simple Smart Contract

function get() constant returns (uint retVal) {

// Events allow light clients to react on

// This is the constructor whose code is

function mint(address receiver, uint amount) {

function send(address receiver, uint amount) {

5.1.2 Blockchain Basics

5.1. Introduction to Smart Contracts 13

5.1.3 The Ethereum Virtual Machine

Storage, Memory and the Stack

5.1. Introduction to Smart Contracts 15

Delegatecall / Callcode and Libraries

5.2 Installing Solidity

5.2.2 npm / Node.js

5.2.3 Binary Packages

5.2.4 Building from Source

brew install boost --c++11 # this takes a while

Ubuntu Trusty (14.04)

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ethereum/ethereum

5.2. Installing Solidity 17

Ubuntu Xenial (16.04)

# (Option 1) For those willing to add the Ethereum PPA:

## (Option 2) For those willing to backport libcrypto++:

Run this if you plan on installing Solidity only:

5.3 Solidity by Example

/// @title V oting with delegation.

// This is a type for a single proposal.

address public chairperson;

// This declares a state variable that

// A dynamically-sized array of `Proposal` structs.

/// Create a new ballot to choose one of `proposalN ames`.

// For each of the provided proposal names,

// Give `voter` the right to vote on this ballot.

5.3. Solidity by Example 19

/// Delegate your vote to the voter `to`.

// Forward the delegation as long as

// We found a loop in the delegation, not allowed.

// Since `sender` is a reference, this

/// Give your vote (including votes delegated to you)

// If `proposal` is out of the range of the array,

// this will throw automatically and revert all

/// @dev Computes the winning proposal taking all

5.3.2 Blind Auction

Simple Open Auction

// Current state of the auction.

// Allowed withdrawals of previous bids

// Set to true at the end, disallows any change

5.3. Solidity by Example 21

// Events that will be fired on changes.

// The following is a so-called natspec comment,

/// Create a simple auction with `_biddingTime`

/// Bid on the auction with the value sent

/// W ithdraw a bid that was overbid.

/// End the auction and send the highest bid

5.3. Solidity by Example 23

address public beneficiary;

mapping(address => Bid[]) public bids;

address public highestBidder;

// Allowed withdrawals of previous bids

event AuctionEnded(address winner, uint highestBid);

/// M odifiers are a convenient way to validate inputs to

/// Place a blinded bid with `_blindedBid` = sha3(value,

/// place multiple bids.

// This is an "internal" function which means that it

5.3. Solidity by Example 25

Single-line comments (//) and multi-line comments (/.../) are possible.