mirror of
https://github.com/ethereum/solidity
synced 2023-10-03 13:03:40 +00:00
238 lines
9.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
238 lines
9.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. _inline-assembly:
|
|
|
|
###############
|
|
Inline Assembly
|
|
###############
|
|
|
|
.. index:: ! assembly, ! asm, ! evmasm
|
|
|
|
|
|
You can interleave Solidity statements with inline assembly in a language close
|
|
to the one of the Ethereum virtual machine. This gives you more fine-grained control,
|
|
which is especially useful when you are enhancing the language by writing libraries.
|
|
|
|
The language used for inline assembly in Solidity is called :ref:`Yul <yul>`
|
|
and it is documented in its own section. This section will only cover
|
|
how the inline assembly code can interface with the surrounding Solidity code.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. warning::
|
|
Inline assembly is a way to access the Ethereum Virtual Machine
|
|
at a low level. This bypasses several important safety
|
|
features and checks of Solidity. You should only use it for
|
|
tasks that need it, and only if you are confident with using it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
An inline assembly block is marked by ``assembly { ... }``, where the code inside
|
|
the curly braces is code in the :ref:`Yul <yul>` language.
|
|
|
|
The inline assembly code can access local Solidity variables as explained below.
|
|
|
|
Different inline assembly blocks share no namespace, i.e. it is not possible
|
|
to call a Yul function or access a Yul variable defined in a different inline assembly block.
|
|
|
|
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 with "plain Solidity" and the
|
|
idea is that reusable assembly libraries can enhance the Solidity language
|
|
without a compiler change.
|
|
|
|
.. code::
|
|
|
|
// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0
|
|
pragma solidity >=0.4.16 <0.8.0;
|
|
|
|
library GetCode {
|
|
function at(address _addr) public view returns (bytes memory 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 is also beneficial in cases where the optimizer fails to produce
|
|
efficient code, for example:
|
|
|
|
.. code::
|
|
|
|
// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0
|
|
pragma solidity >=0.4.16 <0.8.0;
|
|
|
|
|
|
library VectorSum {
|
|
// This function is less efficient because the optimizer currently fails to
|
|
// remove the bounds checks in array access.
|
|
function sumSolidity(uint[] memory _data) public pure returns (uint sum) {
|
|
for (uint i = 0; i < _data.length; ++i)
|
|
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[] memory _data) public pure returns (uint sum) {
|
|
for (uint i = 0; i < _data.length; ++i) {
|
|
assembly {
|
|
sum := add(sum, mload(add(add(_data, 0x20), mul(i, 0x20))))
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
// Same as above, but accomplish the entire code within inline assembly.
|
|
function sumPureAsm(uint[] memory _data) public pure returns (uint sum) {
|
|
assembly {
|
|
// Load the length (first 32 bytes)
|
|
let len := mload(_data)
|
|
|
|
// Skip over the length field.
|
|
//
|
|
// Keep temporary variable so it can be incremented in place.
|
|
//
|
|
// NOTE: incrementing _data would result in an unusable
|
|
// _data variable after this assembly block
|
|
let data := add(_data, 0x20)
|
|
|
|
// Iterate until the bound is not met.
|
|
for
|
|
{ let end := add(data, mul(len, 0x20)) }
|
|
lt(data, end)
|
|
{ data := add(data, 0x20) }
|
|
{
|
|
sum := add(sum, mload(data))
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Access to External Variables, Functions and Libraries
|
|
-----------------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
You can access Solidity variables and other identifiers by using their name.
|
|
|
|
Local variables of value type are directly usable in inline assembly.
|
|
|
|
Local variables that refer to memory or calldata evaluate to the
|
|
address of the variable in memory, resp. calldata, not the value itself.
|
|
|
|
For local storage variables or state variables, a single Yul identifier
|
|
is not sufficient, since they do not necessarily occupy a single full storage slot.
|
|
Therefore, their "address" is composed of a slot and a byte-offset
|
|
inside that slot. To retrieve the slot pointed to by the variable ``x``, you
|
|
use ``x.slot``, and to retrieve the byte-offset you use ``x.offset``.
|
|
Using ``x`` itself will result in an error.
|
|
|
|
Local Solidity variables are available for assignments, for example:
|
|
|
|
.. code::
|
|
|
|
// SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0
|
|
pragma solidity ^0.7.0;
|
|
|
|
contract C {
|
|
uint b;
|
|
function f(uint x) public view returns (uint r) {
|
|
assembly {
|
|
// We ignore the storage slot offset, we know it is zero
|
|
// in this special case.
|
|
r := mul(x, sload(b.slot))
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
.. warning::
|
|
If you access variables of a type that spans less than 256 bits
|
|
(for example ``uint64``, ``address``, ``bytes16`` or ``byte``),
|
|
you cannot make any assumptions about bits not part of the
|
|
encoding of the type. Especially, do not assume them to be zero.
|
|
To be safe, always clear the data properly before you use it
|
|
in a context where this is important:
|
|
``uint32 x = f(); assembly { x := and(x, 0xffffffff) /* now use x */ }``
|
|
To clean signed types, you can use the ``signextend`` opcode:
|
|
``assembly { signextend(<num_bytes_of_x_minus_one>, x) }``
|
|
|
|
|
|
Since Solidity 0.6.0 the name of a inline assembly variable may not
|
|
shadow any declaration visible in the scope of the inline assembly block
|
|
(including variable, contract and function declarations).
|
|
|
|
Since Solidity 0.7.0, variables and functions declared inside the
|
|
inline assembly block may not contain ``.``, but using ``.`` is
|
|
valid to access Solidity variables from outside the inline assembly block.
|
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
You can assign to the ``.slot`` part of a local storage variable pointer.
|
|
For these (structs, arrays or mappings), the ``.offset`` part is always zero.
|
|
It is not possible to assign to the ``.slot`` or ``.offset`` part of a state variable,
|
|
though.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Things to Avoid
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
Inline assembly might have a quite high-level look, but it actually is extremely
|
|
low-level. Function calls, loops, ifs and switches are converted by simple
|
|
rewriting rules and after that, the only thing the assembler does for you is re-arranging
|
|
functional-style opcodes, counting stack height for
|
|
variable access and removing stack slots for assembly-local variables when the end
|
|
of their block is reached.
|
|
|
|
Conventions in Solidity
|
|
-----------------------
|
|
|
|
In contrast to EVM assembly, Solidity has types which are narrower than 256 bits,
|
|
e.g. ``uint24``. For efficiency, most arithmetic operations ignore the fact that
|
|
types can be shorter than 256
|
|
bits, and the higher-order bits are cleaned when necessary,
|
|
i.e., 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 the following way. There is a "free memory pointer"
|
|
at position ``0x40`` in memory. If you want to allocate memory, use the memory
|
|
starting from where this pointer points at and update it.
|
|
There is no guarantee that the memory has not been used before and thus
|
|
you cannot assume that its contents are zero bytes.
|
|
There is no built-in mechanism to release or free allocated memory.
|
|
Here is an assembly snippet you can use for allocating memory that follows the process outlined above::
|
|
|
|
function allocate(length) -> pos {
|
|
pos := mload(0x40)
|
|
mstore(0x40, add(pos, length))
|
|
}
|
|
|
|
The first 64 bytes of memory can be used as "scratch space" for short-term
|
|
allocation. The 32 bytes after the free memory pointer (i.e., starting at ``0x60``)
|
|
are meant to be zero permanently and is used as the initial value for
|
|
empty dynamic memory arrays.
|
|
This means that the allocatable memory starts at ``0x80``, which is the initial value
|
|
of the free memory pointer.
|
|
|
|
Elements in memory arrays in Solidity always occupy multiples of 32 bytes (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 followed by the array elements.
|
|
|
|
.. warning::
|
|
Statically-sized memory arrays do not have a length field, but it might be added later
|
|
to allow better convertibility between statically- and dynamically-sized arrays, so
|
|
do not rely on this.
|