I'm working on an application that needs to hold a lot of very simple text /[ACTGN]{300}/ x 1,000,000 in memory. However, Perl seems to very stubbornly insist on using 32 bits for each character. As a result, when I load a 100MB file, 400MB of memory is used. See for yourself:
/usr/bin/time -f "%MKb" -- perl -e "'A' x 1024 x 1024 x 100"

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Is there any way to store this data in a more economical format? pack() doesn't help at all. I've tried a lot of hideous hacks to no avail. Any tricks or tips would be greatly appreciated.

One requirement though: I want to only use Perl core modules since I'll be distributing this application to people who may not know how to install additional modules. So Bit::Vector is out.

Thanks in advance,
   -Dan

In reply to Reducing memory footprint of strings by dansmith

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