arguments of the sha256 function in Solidity

Question

In Solidity, I find that the sha256 function can be used like this a = sha256(uint b, string c, bool d, ......) (the arguments can be a combination of different types, and the other types can also be included.)

What does sha256 do with the arguments of different types?

score 11 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 14 '16 at 20:31

11

Solidity docs say that sha256 (and sha3, ripemd160) arguments are tightly packed:

“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)

Using the question's example of a = sha256(uint b, string c, bool d),

if we assign some values like b is 31415, c is "abc", and d is false,
then a would equal sha256(31415, 6382179, 0), which is same as sha256(0x7ab761626300).

For completeness, the docs mention that:

If padding is needed, explicit type conversions can be used: sha3(“x00x12”) is the same as sha3(uint16(0x12)).

edited Jun 14 '16 at 20:31

Denton L

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answered May 08 '16 at 06:59

eth

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What would the following line return : uint var = sha3("abc","pqr",121); – Rahul Sharma Nov 15 '16 at 04:59
@RahulSharma browser-solidity tells me 0xec7bee56c53a0d4df8f2fb29d262d59c29a5896470ad3788c7a89cd70eac82ad – eth Nov 15 '16 at 08:38
Is it the output of sha3 function? – Rahul Sharma Nov 15 '16 at 08:40
Yes https://gist.github.com/anonymous/9e144d1bd0def71a1f80053404fe4896 (I forgot to use constant but browser-solidity is still able to show the result.) – eth Nov 15 '16 at 08:43

arguments of the sha256 function in Solidity

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