Thanks all for the replies. What i want to do is put all compact strings in a hash, so it uses less memory than the 'normal' strings. I have like 2 million of around 50 character strings. I thus want to store these, and convert them to a compact string format. Once all read, i want to loop through each hash key and convert it back to original string format to do comparisons with another string. In short; -make string compact and put in hash -get key of hash, and convert it to original string. To JavaFan. With vec(), do you mean something like the code below?; my $input_string = "ACGTCAGA"; $input_string =~ tr ACGT 0-3; my $packed_string=""; my $packing_index=0; foreach (split //, $input_string){ vec( $packed_string, $packing_index++, 2 ) = $_; } do you know how i can then convert the $packed_string back to normal readable textstring? So back to original "ACGTCAGA".

In reply to Re^2: string to more compact format by Boetsie
in thread string to more compact format by Boetsie

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