Are you talking about shrinking in place, so you don't have the overhead of having the compressed and uncompressed strings in memory at the same time? 
my $str =<<'EOS';
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
His daughter, named Nan,
Ran off with a man.
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.
EOS

sub shrink_in_place {
    for (my $i=0; $i<length($_[0]); $i+=7) {
        for (substr($_[0], $i, 8)) {
            $_ = pack('B*', grep s/.(.{7})/$1/g, unpack('B*', $_));
        }
    }
}

sub grow_in_place {
    for (my $i=0; $i<length($_[0]); $i+=8) {
        for (substr($_[0], $i, 7)) {
            $_ = pack('B*', grep s/(.{7})/0$1/g, unpack('B*', $_));
        }
    }
}

print "$str";
printf "Length is %d\n", length($str);
shrink_in_place($str);
printf "Shrunk length is %d\n", length($str);
grow_in_place($str);
print "Restored: $str";

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In reply to Re^5: Efficient 7bit compression by Roy Johnson
in thread Efficient 7bit compression by Limbic~Region

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