Your description suggests that your data are all integers - is this the case? If so there will be a lot of duplicate data points so you can first of all tot up all the same integers into a hash. Only once you have done that should you think about putting them into the bins.

You should then sort the keys of your totals hash and the keys of your bins hash so you only have to step through each hash once.

You could do this in any language, but perl will probably be as good as most. Have a look in your favourite algorithms book as this is not an uncommon sort of task and will be covered there in detail.

In reply to Re: Perl hit counter for multiple ranges, optimization or options in other languages? by hippo
in thread Perl hit counter for multiple ranges, optimization or options in other languages? by SaktiMonk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.