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If I pass in the string QmbPAr5RcCZZDRsNKnf2p1t6GK3Qu7oDH39HCK3aewUq3w to the sp.pack method in an entrypoint and perform and sp.trace in smartpy I expect to get the following bytes:

0x516d62504172355263435a5a4452734e4b6e663270317436474b335175376f4448333948434b3361657755713377

However, I receive the following bytes:

0x05010000002e516d62504172355263435a5a4452734e4b6e663270317436474b335175376f4448333948434b3361657755713377

You can see that the bytes 0x05010000002e are being prepended to the value during the pack

Why does this happen?

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0x05 means "this is a packed Michelson value". 0x01 means "this is a string". The remaining 4 bytes represent the length of the string.

A complete description of the binary format of Michelson values can be generated by the following command: tezos-codec describe alpha.script.expr binary schema.

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  • interesting.. thank you. do you know if it is possible to turn a string sent into an entrypoint into its raw bytes representation within the entrypoint? i thought sp.pack would do this, and while sp.utils.bytes_of_string gives the right answer it is only available at compile time
    – 0x10
    Jan 21, 2022 at 11:33
  • i expanded this comment into a full question: tezos.stackexchange.com/questions/4001/…
    – 0x10
    Jan 21, 2022 at 11:44

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