How are storage pointers implemented in the EVM layer?

Question

I'm trying to understand how storage pointers work. From looking at the ethereumjs-vm implementation it seems that the actual value is returned from SLOAD. Does the compiler handle the 'pointer' functionality? (ie. calls SSTORE if its modified).

Answer 1

Yes, the compiler handles the pointer functionality. You do not need to explicitly de-reference a storage pointer when you want to write to or read from the storage location it points to.

I think the fact that they are called pointers is very confusing. It reminds me of C pointers, but storage pointers in Solidity are much more like C++ or PHP references than they are like C pointers.

Solidity pointers:

uint256[] public a;
constructor() public
{
    a.push(1);
    test(a);
}
function test(uint256[] storage b) private
{
    b[0] = 7;
    // a[0] is now 7
}

C++ references (similar to Solidity pointers):

int a = 1;
int& b = a;
b = 7;
// a is now 7

PHP references (also similar to Solidity pointers):

$a = 1;
$b = &$a;
$b = 7;
// a is now 7

C pointers (very different from Solidity pointers):

int a = 1;
int* b = &a;
b = 7;
// a is now still 1