Packed Offsets

• Instead of making index numbers 10-byte strings, use 4-byte machine integers:

 print $index_fh, pack "N", $pos;

• Instead of "0 ", we use "\x00\x00\x00\x00"

• Instead of "1 ", we use "\x00\x00\x00\x01"

• Instead of "10 ", we use "\x00\x00\x00\x0a"

• Instead of "1000000000", we use "\x3b\x9a\xca\x00"

  • Benefit: Smaller index