did you consider using a lookup-table to calculate the number of bits, changing time with memory-complexity?

for example 

 # for each character, count the on bits in that character
my %bits_in;
foreach my $char ( map { chr } 0 .. 255 ) {
    foreach my $bit ( 0 .. 7 ) {
        $bits_in{ $char } += vec( $char, $bit, 1 );
    }
}

[download]
could be written 
# for each character, count the on bits in that character
my %bits_in;
foreach my $char ( map { chr } 0 .. 255 ) {
        $bits_in{ $char } = $sum[ $char ];
}

[download]

Cheers Rolf

In reply to Re: An array of boolean values in a bitfield by LanX
in thread An array of boolean values in a bitfield by kyle

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