Types

Basic Types

Basic types reflect types Script operates on.

  • bool - a boolean value. Can be either true or false. verify and if statements expect an expression returning this type.

  • bit - a binary flag. Only arrays of this type can be created, see below. Array of bits is expected by checkMultiSig function.

  • int - a 32-bit signed integer. Literals of this type can be specified in dec or hex.

    int a = -1234;
int b = 0xff00i; // notice `i` suffix

  • byte - a single byte. Literals of this type are specified in hex (with 0x prefix) or as UTF-8 strings (in doubel quotes).

    byte x = 0x11;
byte y = "a";

Arrays

Overall syntax of an array is:

[ element_type ; size ]

In case of bit and byte the array will mean a single byte vector on the stack in Bitcoin Virtual Machine terms. In case of other types the array will mean a number of stack elements with element 0 on the bottom. You can creaye bit array literals with 0b prefix, byte arrays with 0x prefix or double quotes and any other arrays with comma-separated lists in brackets.

[bit;4] checkbits = 0b1011;
[byte;3] a = 0x11ab33;
[byte; 3] b = "abc";
[int;5] c = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
[[byte;2];3] d = ["ab", "cd", "ef"];

It is also possible to define a byte list if the array size is unknown at the compile time.

[byte] str = expr;

A byte array can be implicitly casted to a byte list but not the other way. It is recommended though to use explicit sizes as much as possible to leverage the static type checking of the size.

([byte] left, [byte] right) = expr @ 3;   // okay
([byte;3] left, [byte] right) = expr @ 3; // better
([byte;2] left, [byte] right) = expr @ 3; // type error

With an exception of bit arrays the array elements can be accessed by an index starting from 0.

[byte] arr = "abcd"
byte c = arr[2];
byte x = arr[(i + 1) % 4];

Domain-Spcecific Types

To increase safety, Spedn introduces meaningful types that help with catching semantic errors at compile time.

Numeric types

These types add meaning to a raw int. They must be explicitly casted from int with a type constructor. They cannot be casted back to int.

  • Time - represents an absolute time.

    Can be expressed as a Unix Timestamp or a Block Height and variously defined.

    Time x = `2018-10-13 21:37:00`; // defined with a time literal
Time y = TimeStamp(1539466620); // conversion from `int` interpreted as Unix Timestamp
Time z = TimeStamp(584834);     // conversion from `int` interpreted as Block Height

  • TimeSpan - represents a relative time period. Can be expressed as a number of blocks or 512-seconds periods.

    TimeSpan x = 1d 2h 3m 4s; // Time units literal. Be awre that the number will be rounded down to full 512s periods
TimeSpan y = 10b;         // Blocks literal.
TimeSpan z = Blocks(10);  // Conversion from `int`

Binary types

These types add meaning to a raw byte arrays. They can be implicitly casted to [byte]. They must be explicitly casted from [byte] with a type constructor.

  • PubKey - represents a public key.

    PubKey alice = PubKey(0x11223344556677889900aabbccddeeff);

  • Sig - represents a tx signature (which can be checked with checkSig).

    Sig alice = Sig(0x11223344556677889900aabbccddeeff);
verify checkSig(alice, alicePubKey);

  • DataSig - represents a data signature (which can be checked with checkDataSig).

    DataSig alice = DataSig(0x11223344556677889900aabbccddee);
verify checkDataSig(alice, preimageHash, alicePubKey);

  • Ripemd160 - represents a result of RIPEMD-160 hash.

    Ripemd160 h = hash160(pubKey);

  • Sha1 - represents a result of SHA-1 hash.

    Sha1 x = sha1(secret);

  • Sha256 - represents a result of SHA-256 hash.

    Sha256 x = hash256(secret);

Special types

These are types that can appear in expressions but you cannot define variables of them.

  • Verification - almost like bool but the only thing you can do with it is to pass it to verify.

    This is a return type of checkLockTime and checkSequence functions.:

    verify checkSequence(8b);
  • Tuple - a series of values that can be of different types.

    Returned by @ expressions, can be deconstructed or passed to fst or snd function.

    (byte left; [byte] right) = str @ 1;
[byte] right = snd(str @ n);

Custom types

You can defile a type alias. The name of the new type must start with a capital letter. The types have to be defined before contracts in the code file. Syntax is:

type Name = other type ;

Once defined you can declare variables of the new type and use a type constructor for casting a raw type to an alias. It behaves the same way as constructors of of domain-specific types described in the previous sections. Actually, all of these are defined as type aliases internally.

type Message = [byte;42];
...
Message msg = Message(str);