From 6a6976dc1922903e847b59ee57c09a86aeaa38f5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Denton Liu Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2016 15:12:35 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] Document constant behaviour for hashes --- docs/units-and-global-variables.rst | 4 ++++ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/units-and-global-variables.rst b/docs/units-and-global-variables.rst index d1d578ed2..3b5d5802e 100644 --- a/docs/units-and-global-variables.rst +++ b/docs/units-and-global-variables.rst @@ -109,6 +109,10 @@ This means that the following are all identical:: If padding is needed, explicit type conversions can be used: ``sha3("\x00\x12")`` is the same as ``sha3(uint16(0x12))``. +Note that constants will packed using the minimum number of bytes required to store them. +This means that, for example, ``sha3(0) == sha3(uint8(0))`` and +``sha3(0x12345678) == sha3(uint32(0x12345678))``. + 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: