Fix BuiltinByteString literal construction

[zliu41]

The IsString instance of Haskell's ByteString converts a String to ByteString by:

• Each Char (i.e., Unicode code point) is converted to a Word8.
• If the Char is >= 256, it wraps around (i.e., modulo 256).

ghci> "\127" :: BS.ByteString
"\DEL"
ghci> "\255" :: BS.ByteString
"\255"
ghci> "\256" :: BS.ByteString
"\NUL

On the other hand, the IsString instance of BuiltinByteString uses UTF-8 encoding, which means it is only consistent with ByteString for Chars <= 127:

ghci> "\127" :: BuiltinByteString
"\DEL"
ghci> "\255" :: BuiltinByteString
"\195\191"
ghci> "\256" :: BuiltinByteString
"\196\128"

This is also the case in Plinth, for instance $$(compile [|| "\255" ||]) :: CompiledCode BuiltinByteString results in #c3bf. This is because GHC converts a String into a Literal containing a UTF-8 encoded ByteString. In this particular case, this is what the plugin sees: unpackCStringUtf8# "\195\191".

This is a problem, not only because of the inconsistency between ByteString and BuiltinByteString, but more importantly because it means there is no easy way to construct a BuiltinByteString literal in Plinth, where some bytes are between 128 and 255. Thus, it is better to adopt the ByteString's behavior.

To do so, we'll need to update both the IsString instance of BuiltinByteString, as well as updating the plugin.

Updating the instance is easy, because the plugin does not compile the unfolding of the instance, but instead has special logic to handle it directly. So we can write any Haskell code in the instance, which means we can simply delegate to ByteString's instance.

Regarding the plugin, we'll need to update the special logic that handles BuiltinByteString's IsString instance. There are two places, here and here. The first deals with stringToBuiltinByteString, and the second deals with fromString @BuiltinByteString.

In both places, we currently use stringExprContent to extract the literal ByteString from the CoreExpr. We need to update this extraction logic to detect unpackCStringUtf8# bs. Instead of returning bs, it should return fromString @ByteString . Text.unpack . Text.decodeUtf8' $ bs. Note that the extraction logic for BuiltinString should stay the same.

Property based tests should be added verifying that fromString for ByteString and BuiltinByteString behave consistently, as well as String and BuiltinString.

[michaelpj]

• Basic plan seems fine
• This is a breaking change for anyone currently using the IsString instance, but probably nobody is? But anyway: if we're not going to fix it we should probably get rid of it, it's just a footgun.
• This will work for actual overloaded string literals, but won't work for uses of fromString on other strings. That's fine - we never handle such things anyway since we can't deal with values of type String.
• It seems kind of awkward to me to have this in the frontend but have no way of doing the corresponding Text/ByteString conversions in actual UPLC. It's hard to fix that without adding new builtins, though, which we probably don't want to do.
• Have we considered asking people to create bytestring literals from lists of integers? e.g. [0x01, 0x02]. We could potentially even make this nice by using OverloadedLists.

[zliu41]

Have we considered asking people to create bytestring literals from lists of integers? e.g. [0x01, 0x02]. We could potentially even make this nice by using OverloadedLists.

That's doable in Haskell, but I don't think it's possible in Plinth

[colll78]

To be in-line with what all the other smart contract languages expose, Plinth should allow the creation of byte string literals in three ways:

1. ByteArray: as an array of values ranging from 0 to 255. In Aiken:

// both are valid ByteArray definitions:
#[102, 111, 111]
#[0x66, 0x6f, 0x6f]

In Plinth we can expose something like this:

import PlutusTx.Prelude qualified as P
import qualified Data.ByteString as BS
import Data.Word (Word8)

builtinByteArray :: [Word8] -> BuiltinByteString
builtinByteArray = P.toBuiltin . BS.pack 

ourByteArray :: BuiltinByteString
ourByteArray = builtinByteArray [
    0x01, 0x23, 0x45, 0x67, 0x89, 0xab, 0xcd, 0xef,
    0xfe, 0xdc, 0xba, 0x98, 0x76, 0x54, 0x32, 0x10,
    0x11, 0x22, 0x33, 0x44, 0x55, 0x66, 0x77, 0x88,
    0x99, 0xaa, 0xbb, 0xcc, 0xdd, 0xee, 0xff, 0x00
  ]

2. ByteString: as a UTF-8 encoded byte string. This is the default representation for double-quoted constants in the other sc languages targeting Plutus Core. In Aiken:

"foo"

In Plinth and Plutarch this is the default IsString instance.

ourByteString :: BuiltinByteString 
ourByteString = "foo" 

3. HexByteString: as a hex-encoded byte string. It is common to manipulate base-16 encoded byte strings in blockchain environments (transaction ids, script hashes, public key hashes, etc), so it makes sense to provide a short-hand for defining BuiltinByteString literals from hexadecimal strings.

In Aiken, this is a double-quoted byte string prefixed with a # like so:

#"666f6f" 

In Plutarch this is:

someHexLiteral :: ClosedTerm PByteString 
someHexLiteral = phexByteStr "666f6f"

In Plinth we can expose something like this:

import Data.Word (Word8)
import Data.Char (toLower)
import PlutusLedgerApi.V2 (BuiltinByteString)
import PlutusTx.Prelude qualified as P
import qualified Data.ByteString as BS

toBuiltinHexString :: String -> BuiltinByteString 
toBuiltinHexString = P.toBuiltin . toHexString

toHexString :: String -> BS.ByteString 
toHexString = 
  BS.pack . f
  where
    f "" = []
    f [_] = error "UnevenLength"
    f (x : y : rest) = (hexDigitToWord8 x * 16 + hexDigitToWord8 y) : f rest

hexDigitToWord8 :: HasCallStack => Char -> Word8
hexDigitToWord8 = f . toLower
  where
    f :: Char -> Word8
    f '0' = 0
    f '1' = 1
    f '2' = 2
    f '3' = 3
    f '4' = 4
    f '5' = 5
    f '6' = 6
    f '7' = 7
    f '8' = 8
    f '9' = 9
    f 'a' = 10
    f 'b' = 11
    f 'c' = 12
    f 'd' = 13
    f 'e' = 14
    f 'f' = 15
    f c = error ("InvalidHexDigit " <> [c])

[effectfully]

I feel strongly about this, so I'm retriaging it as a UX bug rather than merely a tech debt issue.

[kwxm]

@Unisay This may be the same as/related to this issue.

[kwxm]

Another annoying thing related to bytestrings is that the Show instance for Data is automatically derived, which gives you things like this:

ghci> PlutusCore.Data.B $ ByteString.pack [12,44,234,234,23,54,32,1,23,12,31,3,12,3,24,1,31,23,12,31,23,12,3,123]
B "\f,\234\234\ETB6 \SOH\ETB\f\US\ETX\f\ETX\CAN\SOH\US\ETB\f\US\ETB\f\ETX{"

It would be good if we could make this show you a proper hex string, but then maybe we'd need to fix the Read instance too.

[Unisay]

Task to implement BuiltinByteString construction from a list of bytes: https://github.com/IntersectMBO/plutus/issues/6670