Skip to main content

Overview

Summary

ethdebug/format/pointer is a JSON schema for pointing to bytes in the EVM.

Debuggers need to know where to find variables when looking at a running machine, which means that debuggers must be able to find the related regions of the stack, memory, storage, etc. where each of the variables in scope live at any point in time.

This gets particularly complicated on the EVM because many common languages employ novel techniques for organizing data. (Some of these techniques serve to work around machine limitations; others serve to take advantage of the unique way the EVM is designed.) For a thorough description of how Solidity organizes memory, please see related work Data Representation in Solidity.

As a consequence of this complexity, this schema seeks to allow compilers the expressiveness required for describing these allocation techniques at compile-time. To readers continuing on, a warning may apply.

This format defines a schema for locating semantically-cohesive bytes ranges in a running EVM.

JSON values in this schema describe primarily where data is to be found to identify to debuggers reading a trace (or attached to a running EVM) which data must be read from which location(s). Values in this schema may address a single continuous region of bytes or an aggregation of non-continuous related regions.

Reading this schema​

The ethdebug/format/pointer schema is a root schema that composes other related schemas in the ethdebug/format/pointer/* namespace.

These schemas (like all schemas in this format) are specified as JSON Schema, draft 2020-12.

Please refer to one or more of the following resources in this section, or see the navigation bar for complete contents.