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The RETURN opcode in the EVM takes 2 arguments(ie, consumes two elements from the stack), but what do they represent? I tried to understand the yellow paper describing them, but I don't understand the notation used.

For reference this is the section in the yellow paper: enter image description here

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The 2 arguments to the RETURN opcode are offsets into memory: the starting and ending offset.

The EVM execution is stopped and data consisting of the memory bytes from [start, end-1] are the output of the execution.

Example:

If memory is [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], a return with offsets 1, 4 would produce a result (output) of 3 bytes (6, 7, 8).

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    Memory as in the "storage" mechanism, or as in treating the stack like a flat array of memory?
    – Earlz
    Aug 15, 2016 at 21:17
  • Memory as what is stored by the MSTORE opcode.
    – eth ♦
    Aug 15, 2016 at 23:27
  • By chance do you know of a "plain text" reference for all the opcode arguments? Other than the yellow paper's mathy notation, I can't find any actual reference beyond the code itself (which isn't always too clear)
    – Earlz
    Aug 16, 2016 at 17:52
  • Regarding EVM code, since there's implementations across a number of languages that may help reason about them. I don't know of a simpler reference and IMHO a new, clearer reference is more than welcome but it should still be complete.
    – eth ♦
    Aug 17, 2016 at 11:00
  • You may find our implementation is fairly readable reference for opcodes (though I would like increase the number of comments there): github.com/eris-ltd/eris-db/blob/develop/manager/eris-mint/evm/…. @Ethan has a nice low-level guide, though not completely comprehensive as a spec github.com/ebuchman/evm-tools/blob/master/analysis/guide.md. I too would like to see the Ethereum spec presented in a more appropriate format than the yellow paper...
    – silasdavis
    Oct 4, 2016 at 14:47

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