Re^3: Comparing strings (exact matches) in LARGE numbers FAST

or a mere mortal like myself, the code isn't that simple :-)
... looping concatenations through substr()'s and performing hash lookup before vec()torizing into $bits, followed by unpack()ing it?

Your description seems spot on, so it's not that complicated ;)

This overhead is less noticeable, right?

Less noticable than what? See Re^3: Comparing strings (exact matches) in LARGE numbers FAST for the full skinny, but in summary:

The memory requirement is fixed (512MB) for any number of keys, and the lookup is at least as fast as a native hash which would break the memory of a 32-bit machine with around 50e6 keys.

If the bug in vec is fixed, it will be significantly faster than a native hash.

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