trie: use explicit errors in stacktrie (instead of panic) (#28361)

This PR removes panics from stacktrie (mostly), and makes the Update return errors instead. While adding tests for this, I also found that one case of possible corruption was not caught, which is now fixed.

trie/stacktrie.go

@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ package trie
 
 import (
 	"bytes"
+	"errors"
 	"sync"
 
 	"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/common"
@@ -92,12 +93,14 @@ func NewStackTrie(options *StackTrieOptions) *StackTrie {
 
 // Update inserts a (key, value) pair into the stack trie.
 func (t *StackTrie) Update(key, value []byte) error {
-	k := keybytesToHex(key)
 	if len(value) == 0 {
-		panic("deletion not supported")
+		return errors.New("trying to insert empty (deletion)")
 	}
+	k := keybytesToHex(key)
 	k = k[:len(k)-1] // chop the termination flag
-
+	if bytes.Compare(t.last, k) >= 0 {
+		return errors.New("non-ascending key order")
+	}
 	// track the first and last inserted entries.
 	if t.first == nil {
 		t.first = append([]byte{}, k...)

trie/stacktrie_test.go

@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ import (
 	"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/core/rawdb"
 	"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/crypto"
 	"github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/trie/testutil"
+	"github.com/stretchr/testify/assert"
 	"golang.org/x/exp/slices"
 )
 
@@ -463,3 +464,24 @@ func TestPartialStackTrie(t *testing.T) {
 		}
 	}
 }
+
+func TestStackTrieErrors(t *testing.T) {
+	s := NewStackTrie(nil)
+	// Deletion
+	if err := s.Update(nil, nil); err == nil {
+		t.Fatal("expected error")
+	}
+	if err := s.Update(nil, []byte{}); err == nil {
+		t.Fatal("expected error")
+	}
+	if err := s.Update([]byte{0xa}, []byte{}); err == nil {
+		t.Fatal("expected error")
+	}
+	// Non-ascending keys (going backwards or repeating)
+	assert.Nil(t, s.Update([]byte{0xaa}, []byte{0xa}))
+	assert.NotNil(t, s.Update([]byte{0xaa}, []byte{0xa}), "repeat insert same key")
+	assert.NotNil(t, s.Update([]byte{0xaa}, []byte{0xb}), "repeat insert same key")
+	assert.Nil(t, s.Update([]byte{0xab}, []byte{0xa}))
+	assert.NotNil(t, s.Update([]byte{0x10}, []byte{0xb}), "out of order insert")
+	assert.NotNil(t, s.Update([]byte{0xaa}, []byte{0xb}), "repeat insert same key")
+}