since someone else has already posted a reasonable solution, I'll add a couple of notes:

When discussing numbers, it is important to note the boundary. You said integer, but are negatives possible? is the range outside the 16bit signed limit? 32bit signed limit? is there any limit at all?

When looking for performance solutions, you should also provide information on the platform. Do you need portability? are you on a win32 or unix platform? are you capable of understanding C code? (an Inline::C function would make short work of your problem)

And if possible, providing context is valuable. There have been numerous times when people have posted a very limited description, asking a very targetted question, and it was found that the entire operation could be avoided by use of a different overall strategy. Context helps experienced monks identify those situations.

In reply to Re: Compressing a set of integers by PhiRatE
in thread Compressing a set of integers by toma

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.