Hi, i need a way to pack/zip a string (10 digit number) into another structure which will takes less memory. My goal is to randomize a big array of numbers (112M of records) but i can't load it into memory right now (only 30M of records). So i think about representing each digit via 4 bits that way i can reduce the size of data structure two times. But i need more compression. So i need some hints. Thanks. Roman Update: trying pack('s', $number) way now...