Hello fellow monks, I'm storing values in a bitwise manner for speed up comparations. I can have 0 or more values in the 0..8 range, so I can store it this way: 
$bits |= (1<<$val)

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When 1 single bit is set I want to retrive the original $val. So currently I have this implemented: 
if( unpack( "%16B*", pack("n", $bits)) == 1 ) {
  my $ret = 0;
  while (!($bits & 0x1)) {
    $ret++;
    $bits >>= 1;
  };
  return $ret;
};

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I don't know why, but the while loop seems ugly. Could you enligthen me with a more perlish way to do this? PS: I hope the title is not so much confusing.

In reply to Which bit is set? (inverse of (1<<$value) operator) by wirito

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