Difference between CALL, CALLCODE and DELEGATECALL

Question

CALL and CALLCODE take the same number of operands (in the execution stack). For the exception flag being pushed on top of the stack: 0 means exception, 1 means successful execution. CALL is easy to understand, but I could not digest the subtle difference between CALL & CALLCODE. It is stated in the yellow paper that for

CALLCODE: This means that the recipient is in fact the same account as at present, simply that the code is overwritten.

What does it mean by the code is overwritten? Does that mean I can ask the contract to execute some external code? It would be helpful if anyone can provide me an example to differentiate between the two.

EDIT: DELEGATECALL was added in Homestead what is the difference?

Answer 1

DELEGATECALL basically says that I'm a contract and I'm allowing (delegating) you to do whatever you want to my storage. DELEGATECALL is a security risk for the sending contract which needs to trust that the receiving contract will treat the storage well.

DELEGATECALL was a new opcode that was a bug fix for CALLCODE which did not preserve msg.sender and msg.value. If Alice invokes Bob who does DELEGATECALL to Charlie, the msg.sender in the DELEGATECALL is Alice (whereas if CALLCODE was used the msg.sender would be Bob).

Details

When D does CALL on E, the code runs in the context of E: the storage of E is used.

When D does CALLCODE on E, the code runs in the context of D. So imagine that the code of E is in D. Whenever the code writes to storage, it writes to the storage of account D, instead of E.

contract D {
  uint public n;
  address public sender;

  function callSetN(address _e, uint _n) {
    _e.call(bytes4(sha3("setN(uint256)")), _n); // E's storage is set, D is not modified 
  }

  function callcodeSetN(address _e, uint _n) {
    _e.callcode(bytes4(sha3("setN(uint256)")), _n); // D's storage is set, E is not modified 
  }

  function delegatecallSetN(address _e, uint _n) {
    _e.delegatecall(bytes4(sha3("setN(uint256)")), _n); // D's storage is set, E is not modified 
  }
}

contract E {
  uint public n;
  address public sender;

  function setN(uint _n) {
    n = _n;
    sender = msg.sender;
    // msg.sender is D if invoked by D's callcodeSetN. None of E's storage is updated
    // msg.sender is C if invoked by C.foo(). None of E's storage is updated

    // the value of "this" is D, when invoked by either D's callcodeSetN or C.foo()
  }
}

contract C {
    function foo(D _d, E _e, uint _n) {
        _d.delegatecallSetN(_e, _n);
    }
}

When D does CALLCODE on E, msg.sender inside E is D as commented in the code above.

When an account C invokes D, and D does DELEGATECALL on E, msg.sender inside E is C. That is, E has the same msg.sender and msg.value as D.

You can quickly test above in Solidity Browser.

Answer 2

Showing the difference between the call, callcode and the delegatecall we can consider the example of the following code :

Contracts can interact in three ways

1. Call : By directly calling from a contract through a function which will not set the caller's value but sets the callee's value. And sender in this will be the caller only

2. CallCode : When called through CallCode caller calls the function of the callee and sents its own value (or alter its own value with the called parameters ) but no changes are reflected to the callee's storage. Here also sender is the Caller itself.

3. DelegateCall : When a third contract calls a delegate call to some function in callee on behalf of the caller and storage changes are made in the caller's value and nothing is reflected in callee's storage .

   Here the sender is no more the caller but the third contract Call Helper

pragma solidity ^0.4.0;

contract Caller {
uint public value;
address public sender;

function callSetValue(address _callee, uint _value) {
    _callee.call(bytes4(sha3("setValue(uint256)")), _value); // Callee's storage is set as given , Caller's is not modified 
}

function callcodeSetValue(address _callee, uint _value) {
    _callee.callcode(bytes4(sha3("setValue(uint256)")), _value); // Caller's storage is set, Calee is not modified 
}

function delegatecallSetValue(address _callee, uint _value) {
    _callee.delegatecall(bytes4(sha3("setValue(uint256)")), _value); // Caller's storage is set, Callee is not modified 
}
}

contract Callee {
uint public value;
address public sender;

function setValue(uint _value) {
    value = _value;
    sender = msg.sender;
    // msg.sender is Caller if invoked by Caller's callcodeSetValue. None of Callee's storage is updated
    // msg.sender is OnlyCaller if invoked by onlyCaller.justCall(). None of Callee's storage is updated

    // the value of "this" is Caller, when invoked by either Caller's callcodeSetValue or CallHelper.justCall()
}
}

contract CallHelper {
    function justCall(Caller _caller, Callee _callee, uint _value) {
        _caller.delegatecallSetValue(_callee, _value);
    }
}

Answer 3

An update to @eth's example for solidity v6:

• function definitions must be public

• keccak256 in place of sha3

• call arguments use abi.encode()

• address() to get contract address

  pragma solidity ^0.6.0;
  contract D {
     uint public n;
     address public sender;
  
     function callSetN(address _e, uint _n) public {
       _e.call(abi.encode(bytes4(keccak256("setN(uint256)")), _n)); // E's storage is set, D is not modified 
     }
  
     /*
     callcode is depreciated
     function callcodeSetN(address _e, uint _n) public {
       _e.callcode(abi.encode(bytes4(keccak256("setN(uint256)")), _n)); // D's storage is set, E is not modified 
     }
     */
  
     function delegatecallSetN(address _e, uint _n) public {
       _e.delegatecall(abi.encode(bytes4(keccak256("setN(uint256)")), _n)); // D's storage is set, E is not modified 
     }
   }
  
   contract E {
     uint public n;
     address public sender;
  
     function setN(uint _n) public {
       n = _n;
       sender = msg.sender;
       // msg.sender is D if invoked by D's callcodeSetN. None of E's storage is updated
       // msg.sender is C if invoked by C.foo(). None of E's storage is updated
  
       // the value of "this" is D, when invoked by either D's callcodeSetN or C.foo()
     }
   }
  
   contract C {
       function foo(D _d, E _e, uint _n) public {
           _d.delegatecallSetN(address(_e), _n);
       }
   }