Had you posted a link to the pdf describing the algorithm and it's performance advantages, you might not be coping the flack and "you don't wanna be doing that"s, that you're getting.

With regard to the algorithm, you will not realise those performance benefits if you code this in Perl.

With regard to your problem:

• How big are your indexes?

  Ie. How many offsets do they contain? (How many documents are you indexing?)

• How big are your offsets?

  IOWs, how big is your largest document?

• How are you writing your indexes?

  If you're not writing them in binary (ie. packing them), then you are wasting large amounts of space and time.

Answer those questions and we may be able to help you.