Having trouble storing multiple values in a uint256

Question

In one uint256 I want to store the entire sender's address of 20 bytes and then 12 bytes of a second address. In this case the example addresses will be the following:

0x9E1C3a90c6EB03F914dF819CA9b3c891DE003301 sender address

0xdFd6b3Fd6E13C3E6AE53d510bFAb5217b5b39FeC secondary / other address

I send a tx with the setCharacter function below.

setCharacter(0xdFd6b3Fd6E13C3E6AE53d510bFAb5217b5b39FeC, 25)

Now when I use the getter to retrieve the data I get the following.

getCharacter(25)
owner_address -> 0x9E1C3a90c6EB03F914dF819CA9b3c891DE003301
secondpart -> 0

The secondpart = 0 is not what I am shooting for. I want secondpart to be equal to the equiv of 0xAE53d510bFAb5217b5b39FeC (last 12 bytes of 2nd address) or 0xdFd6b3Fd6E13C3E6AE53d510 (first 12 bytes of the 2nd address). Any pointers on where I went wrong? Thank you for any help.

contract storagetest8 {

    mapping(uint256 => uint256) inventories;

    function setCharacter(address other_address, uint256 index1) 
        external 
    {
        uint256 _id = uint256(msg.sender);
        _id |= uint96(other_address)<<160;
        inventories[index1] = _id;        
    }


    function getCharacter(uint256 index1) 
        external view
    returns(address owner_address, uint256 secondpart) {
        uint256 _id = inventories[index1];
        owner_address = address(_id);
        secondpart = uint256(uint96(_id>>160));
    }

}

Answer 1

Here is a fix and there's no need for the uint96 cast since you need to cast again to uint256.

contract storagetest8 {

    mapping(uint256 => uint256) inventories;

    function setCharacter(address other_address, uint256 index1) 
        external 
    {
        uint256 _id = uint256(msg.sender);
        _id |= uint256(other_address)<<160;  // fix
        inventories[index1] = _id;        
    }


    function getCharacter(uint256 index1) 
        external view
    returns(address owner_address, uint256 secondpart) {
        uint256 _id = inventories[index1];
        owner_address = address(_id);
        secondpart = _id>>160;  // simplified
    }
}

Explanation: In the question, the line in setCharacter could be fixed to: _id |= uint256(uint96(other_address))<<160; Need to cast the 96 bit value back to 256 bits before shifting, because left shifting a 96 bit value by 160 bits equals zero. But may as well keep using 256 bits.

---

When testing in Remix, I had to quote the address "0xdFd6b3Fd6E13C3E6AE53d510bFAb5217b5b39FeC", 25 when invoking setCharacter.

The result is secondpart 53951738724962035537443790828 which is 0xAE53d510bFAb5217b5b39FeC

Answer 2

I have introduced the notion of Micro slots, whilst this is still in the early stages, it does allow you to store multiple values in a single uint256 slot. I want to compare the gas costs of using Micro slots with that of using Bitwise shifting to determine which one is more efficient. I just have not got around to this as yet. Here is a simple example of how this would work in a Solidity contract. Obviously the functions which "get" and "set" the Micro slots would need some validation (to avoid underflow & overflow) and perhaps some event logs emitted etc. This is just a prototype which I hope can move forward as a design pattern for the community to use. For this reason I have opened this Informational EIP.