How can I reduce the size of this file to 83 bytes or less? - optimization

Task description:
Create the divisibility function, which expects an array of integers and its size as a parameter. The function returns how many numbers divisible by two are in the array!
We want to save on the available storage space, so our source code can be a maximum of 83 bytes!
My current code:
int oszthatosag(int a[], int s){int r=0,i;for (i = 0; i < s; ++i)if(a[i] % 2 == 0)++r;return r;}
has a size of 96 bytes. I deleted all the unnecessary whitespaces and reduced the lenghths of the variables to a minimum, but it still doesn't seem to be enough.

You can remove additional spaces, use a branch-less strategy to remove the if, move the initialization/increment of i outside the loop, and decrease r starting from s so to remove the ==0. The resulting code should not only be shorter, but also faster. This assumes s>=0 (otherwise r is smaller than expected).
Here is the final result:
int oszthatosag(int a[],int s){int r=s,i=0;while(i<s)r-=a[i++]&1;return r;}
As pointed out by #Brendan, here is an even shorter version (still assuming s>=0):
int oszthatosag(int a[],int s){int r=s;while(s)r-=a[--s]&1;return r;}
Note that in C, the default return type is int so you can omit it (required in C++). This is generally not a good idea (and cause compiler warnings), but it is shorter:
oszthatosag(int a[],int s){int r=s;while(s)r-=a[--s]&1;return r;}

Related

Is there a way to wrap an integer value into an integer range [min,max] without division or modulo?

My situation is the same as in this question, but instead of using floats, I'm using integers. I feel like this difference might be significant because there might be some bit twiddling hacks that can be used to wrap the value into the range.
One use case for wrapping a value into a range is assigning a value to a bucket in a hash table, like this (range of [0,len(buckets)]):
bucket = buckets[hash(key) % len(buckets)]
If we are continuously adding values to a hash table, it might be worthwhile to optimize this operation.
Since modulo isn't actually needed, there is a shortcut to mapping a hash into a new range. See Lemire's FastRange.
// map a **full-width 32-bit** hash to [0,p) without division.
uint32_t fastrange32(uint32_t word, uint32_t p) {
return (uint32_t)(((uint64_t)word * (uint64_t)p) >> 32);
}
Simply take the high half of a 32x32 -> 64-bit multiply of word * p. If all your word values are smallish, all your results will be 0, so this is only good for word values that are fairly uniformly distributed over the full 32-bit range. Hash functions are normally fine.
I guess that is slightly biased, but that can be worked around see https://github.com/apple/swift/pull/39143
Often the number of buckets is kept as a power of 2. This allows unwanted bits to just get masked-off.
(e.g. If there are 16 buckets then bucket_id = hash & 0xF.)
The downside is that it requires the number of buckets to double each time the table is resized.

Binary search start or end is target

Why is it that when I see example code for binary search there is never an if statement to check if the start of the array or end is the target?
import java.util.Arrays;
public class App {
public static int binary_search(int[] arr, int left, int right, int target) {
if (left > right) {
return -1;
}
int mid = (left + right) / 2;
if (target == arr[mid]) {
return mid;
}
if (target < arr[mid]) {
return binary_search(arr, left, mid - 1, target);
}
return binary_search(arr, mid + 1, right, target);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int[] arr = { 3, 2, 4, -1, 0, 1, 10, 20, 9, 7 };
Arrays.sort(arr);
for (int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
System.out.println("Index: " + i + " value: " + arr[i]);
}
System.out.println(binary_search(arr, arr[0], arr.length - 1, -1));
}
}
in this example if the target was -1 or 20 the search would enter recursion. But it added an if statement to check if target is mid, so why not add two more statements also checking if its left or right?
EDIT:
As pointed out in the comments, I may have misinterpreted the initial question. The answer below assumes that OP meant having the start/end checks as part of each step of the recursion, as opposed to checking once before the recursion even starts.
Since I don't know for sure which interpretation was intended, I'm leaving this post here for now.
Original post:
You seem to be under the impression that "they added an extra check for mid, so surely they should also add an extra check for start and end".
The check "Is mid the target?" is in fact not a mere optimization they added. Recursively checking "mid" is the whole point of a binary search.
When you have a sorted array of elements, a binary search works like this:
Compare the middle element to the target
If the middle element is smaller, throw away the first half
If the middle element is larger, throw away the second half
Otherwise, we found it!
Repeat until we either find the target or there are no more elements.
The act of checking the middle is fundamental to determining which half of the array to continue searching through.
Now, let's say we also add a check for start and end. What does this gain us? Well, if at any point the target happens to be at the very start or end of a segment, we skip a few steps and end slightly sooner. Is this a likely event?
For small toy examples with a few elements, yeah, maybe.
For a massive real-world dataset with billions of entries? Hm, let's think about it. For the sake of simplicity, we assume that we know the target is in the array.
We start with the whole array. Is the first element the target? The odds of that is one in a billion. Pretty unlikely. Is the last element the target? The odds of that is also one in a billion. Pretty unlikely too. You've wasted two extra comparisons to speed up an extremely unlikely case.
We limit ourselves to, say, the first half. We do the same thing again. Is the first element the target? Probably not since the odds are one in half a billion.
...and so on.
The bigger the dataset, the more useless the start/end "optimization" becomes. In fact, in terms of (maximally optimized) comparisons, each step of the algorithm has three comparisons instead of the usual one. VERY roughly estimated, that suggests that the algorithm on average becomes three times slower.
Even for smaller datasets, it is of dubious use since it basically becomes a quasi-linear search instead of a binary search. Yes, the odds are higher, but on average, we can expect a larger amount of comparisons before we reach our target.
The whole point of a binary search is to reach the target with as few wasted comparisons as possible. Adding more unlikely-to-succeed comparisons is typically not the way to improve that.
Edit:
The implementation as posted by OP may also confuse the issue slightly. The implementation chooses to make two comparisons between target and mid. A more optimal implementation would instead make a single three-way comparison (i.e. determine ">", "=" or "<" as a single step instead of two separate ones). This is, for instance, how Java's compareTo or C++'s <=> normally works.
BambooleanLogic's answer is correct and comprehensive. I was curious about how much slower this 'optimization' made binary search, so I wrote a short script to test the change in how many comparisons are performed on average:
Given an array of integers 0, ... , N
do a binary search for every integer in the array,
and count the total number of array accesses made.
To be fair to the optimization, I made it so that after checking arr[left] against target, we increase left by 1, and similarly for right, so that every comparison is as useful as possible. You can try this yourself at Try it online
Results:
Binary search on size 10: Standard 29 Optimized 43 Ratio 1.4828
Binary search on size 100: Standard 580 Optimized 1180 Ratio 2.0345
Binary search on size 1000: Standard 8987 Optimized 21247 Ratio 2.3642
Binary search on size 10000: Standard 123631 Optimized 311205 Ratio 2.5172
Binary search on size 100000: Standard 1568946 Optimized 4108630 Ratio 2.6187
Binary search on size 1000000: Standard 18951445 Optimized 51068017 Ratio 2.6947
Binary search on size 10000000: Standard 223222809 Optimized 610154319 Ratio 2.7334
so the total comparisons does seem to tend to triple the standard number, implying the optimization becomes increasingly unhelpful for larger arrays. I'd be curious whether the limiting ratio is exactly 3.
To add some extra check for start and end along with the mid value is not impressive.
In any algorithm design the main concerned is moving around it's complexity either it is time complexity or space complexity. Most of the time the time complexity is taken as more important aspect.
To learn more about Binary Search Algorithm in different use case like -
If Array is not containing any repeated
If Array has repeated element in this case -
a) return leftmost index/value
b) return rightmost index/value
and many more point

Efficient random permutation of n-set-bits

For the problem of producing a bit-pattern with exactly n set bits, I know of two practical methods, but they both have limitations I'm not happy with.
First, you can enumerate all of the possible word values which have that many bits set in a pre-computed table, and then generate a random index into that table to pick out a possible result. This has the problem that as the output size grows the list of candidate outputs eventually becomes impractically large.
Alternatively, you can pick n non-overlapping bit positions at random (for example, by using a partial Fisher-Yates shuffle) and set those bits only. This approach, however, computes a random state in a much larger space than the number of possible results. For example, it may choose the first and second bits out of three, or it might, separately, choose the second and first bits.
This second approach must consume more bits from the random number source than are strictly required. Since it is choosing n bits in a specific order when their order is unimportant, this means that it is making an arbitrary distinction between n! different ways of producing the same result, and consuming at least floor(log_2(n!)) more bits than are necessary.
Can this be avoided?
There is obviously a third approach of iteratively computing and counting off the legal permutations until a random index is reached, but that's simply a space-for-time trade-off on the first approach, and isn't directly helpful unless there is an efficient way to count off those n permutations.
clarification
The first approach requires picking a single random number between zero and (where w is the output size), as this is the number of possible solutions.
The second approach requires picking n random values between zero and w-1, zero and w-2, etc., and these have a product of , which is times larger than the first approach.
This means that the random number source has been forced to produce bits to distinguish n! different results which are all equivalent. I'd like to know if there's an efficient method to avoid relying on this superfluous randomness. Perhaps by using an algorithm which produces an un-ordered list of bit positions, or by directly computing the nth unique permutation of bits.
Seems like you want a variant of Floyd's algorithm:
Algorithm to select a single, random combination of values?
Should be especially useful in your case, because the containment test is a simple bitmask operation. This will require only k calls to the RNG. In the code below, I assume you have randint(limit) which produces a uniform random from 0 to limit-1, and that you want k bits set in a 32-bit int:
mask = 0;
for (j = 32 - k; j < 32; ++j) {
r = randint(j+1);
b = 1 << r;
if (mask & b) mask |= (1 << j);
else mask |= b;
}
How many bits of entropy you need here depends on how randint() is implemented. If k > 16, set it to 32 - k and negate the result.
Your alternative suggestion of generating a single random number representing one combination among the set (mathematicians would call this a rank of the combination) is simpler if you use colex order rather than lexicographic rank. This code, for example:
for (i = k; i >= 1; --i) {
while ((b = binomial(n, i)) > r) --n;
buf[i-1] = n;
r -= b;
}
will fill the array buf[] with indices from 0 to n-1 for the k-combination at colex rank r. In your case, you'd replace buf[i-1] = n with mask |= (1 << n). The binomial() function is binomial coefficient, which I do with a lookup table (see this). That would make the most efficient use of entropy, but I still think Floyd's algorithm would be a better compromise.
[Expanding my comment:] If you only have a little raw entropy available, then use a PRNG to stretch it further. You only need enough raw entropy to seed a PRNG. Use the PRNG to do the actual shuffle, not the raw entropy. For the next shuffle reseed the PRNG with some more raw entropy. That spreads out the raw entropy and makes less of a demand on your entropy source.
If you know exactly the range of numbers you need out of the PRNG, then you can, carefully, set up your own LCG PRNG to cover the appropriate range while needing the minimum entropy to seed it.
ETA: In C++there is a next_permutation() method. Try using that. See std::next_permutation Implementation Explanation for more.
Is this a theory problem or a practical problem?
You could still do the partial shuffle, but keep track of the order of the ones and forget the zeroes. There are log(k!) bits of unused entropy in their final order for your future consumption.
You could also just use the recurrence (n choose k) = (n-1 choose k-1) + (n-1 choose k) directly. Generate a random number between 0 and (n choose k)-1. Call it r. Iterate over all of the bits from the nth to the first. If we have to set j of the i remaining bits, set the ith if r < (i-1 choose j-1) and clear it, subtracting (i-1 choose j-1), otherwise.
Practically, I wouldn't worry about the couple of words of wasted entropy from the partial shuffle; generating a random 32-bit word with 16 bits set costs somewhere between 64 and 80 bits of entropy, and that's entirely acceptable. The growth rate of the required entropy is asymptotically worse than the theoretical bound, so I'd do something different for really big words.
For really big words, you might generate n independent bits that are 1 with probability k/n. This immediately blows your entropy budget (and then some), but it only uses linearly many bits. The number of set bits is tightly concentrated around k, though. For a further expected linear entropy cost, I can fix it up. This approach has much better memory locality than the partial shuffle approach, so I'd probably prefer it in practice.
I would use solution number 3, generate the i-th permutation.
But do you need to generate the first i-1 ones?
You can do it a bit faster than that with kind of divide and conquer method proposed here: Returning i-th combination of a bit array and maybe you can improve the solution a bit
Background
From the formula you have given - w! / ((w-n)! * n!) it looks like your problem set has to do with the binomial coefficient which deals with calculating the number of unique combinations and not permutations which deals with duplicates in different positions.
You said:
"There is obviously a third approach of iteratively computing and counting off the legal permutations until a random index is reached, but that's simply a space-for-time trade-off on the first approach, and isn't directly helpful unless there is an efficient way to count off those n permutations.
...
This means that the random number source has been forced to produce bits to distinguish n! different results which are all equivalent. I'd like to know if there's an efficient method to avoid relying on this superfluous randomness. Perhaps by using an algorithm which produces an un-ordered list of bit positions, or by directly computing the nth unique permutation of bits."
So, there is a way to efficiently compute the nth unique combination, or rank, from the k-indexes. The k-indexes refers to a unique combination. For example, lets say that the n choose k case of 4 choose 3 is taken. This means that there are a total of 4 numbers that can be selected (0, 1, 2, 3), which is represented by n, and they are taken in groups of 3, which is represented by k. The total number of unique combinations can be calculated as n! / ((k! * (n-k)!). The rank of zero corresponds to the k-index of (2, 1, 0). Rank one is represented by the k-index group of (3, 1, 0), and so forth.
Solution
There is a formula that can be used to very efficiently translate between a k-index group and the corresponding rank without iteration. Likewise, there is a formula for translating between the rank and corresponding k-index group.
I have written a paper on this formula and how it can be seen from Pascal's Triangle. The paper is called Tablizing The Binomial Coeffieicent.
I have written a C# class which is in the public domain that implements the formula described in the paper. It uses very little memory and can be downloaded from the site. It performs the following tasks:
Outputs all the k-indexes in a nice format for any N choose K to a file. The K-indexes can be substituted with more descriptive strings or letters.
Converts the k-index to the proper lexicographic index or rank of an entry in the sorted binomial coefficient table. This technique is much faster than older published techniques that rely on iteration. It does this by using a mathematical property inherent in Pascal's Triangle and is very efficient compared to iterating over the entire set.
Converts the index in a sorted binomial coefficient table to the corresponding k-index. The technique used is also much faster than older iterative solutions.
Uses Mark Dominus method to calculate the binomial coefficient, which is much less likely to overflow and works with larger numbers. This version returns a long value. There is at least one other method that returns an int. Make sure that you use the method that returns a long value.
The class is written in .NET C# and provides a way to manage the objects related to the problem (if any) by using a generic list. The constructor of this class takes a bool value called InitTable that when true will create a generic list to hold the objects to be managed. If this value is false, then it will not create the table. The table does not need to be created in order to use the 4 above methods. Accessor methods are provided to access the table.
There is an associated test class which shows how to use the class and its methods. It has been extensively tested with at least 2 cases and there are no known bugs.
The following tested example code demonstrates how to use the class and will iterate through each unique combination:
public void Test10Choose5()
{
String S;
int Loop;
int N = 10; // Total number of elements in the set.
int K = 5; // Total number of elements in each group.
// Create the bin coeff object required to get all
// the combos for this N choose K combination.
BinCoeff<int> BC = new BinCoeff<int>(N, K, false);
int NumCombos = BinCoeff<int>.GetBinCoeff(N, K);
// The Kindexes array specifies the indexes for a lexigraphic element.
int[] KIndexes = new int[K];
StringBuilder SB = new StringBuilder();
// Loop thru all the combinations for this N choose K case.
for (int Combo = 0; Combo < NumCombos; Combo++)
{
// Get the k-indexes for this combination.
BC.GetKIndexes(Combo, KIndexes);
// Verify that the Kindexes returned can be used to retrive the
// rank or lexigraphic order of the KIndexes in the table.
int Val = BC.GetIndex(true, KIndexes);
if (Val != Combo)
{
S = "Val of " + Val.ToString() + " != Combo Value of " + Combo.ToString();
Console.WriteLine(S);
}
SB.Remove(0, SB.Length);
for (Loop = 0; Loop < K; Loop++)
{
SB.Append(KIndexes[Loop].ToString());
if (Loop < K - 1)
SB.Append(" ");
}
S = "KIndexes = " + SB.ToString();
Console.WriteLine(S);
}
}
So, the way to apply the class to your problem is by considering each bit in the word size as the total number of items. This would be n in the n!/((k! (n - k)!) formula. To obtain k, or the group size, simply count the number of bits set to 1. You would have to create a list or array of the class objects for each possible k, which in this case would be 32. Note that the class does not handle N choose N, N choose 0, or N choose 1 so the code would have to check for those cases and return 1 for both the 32 choose 0 case and 32 choose 32 case. For 32 choose 1, it would need to return 32.
If you need to use values not much larger than 32 choose 16 (the worst case for 32 items - yields 601,080,390 unique combinations), then you can use 32 bit integers, which is how the class is currently implemented. If you need to use 64 bit integers, then you will have to convert the class to use 64 bit longs. The largest value that a long can hold is 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 which is 2 ^ 64. The worst case for n choose k when n is 64 is 64 choose 32. 64 choose 32 is 1,832,624,140,942,590,534 - so a long value will work for all 64 choose k cases. If you need numbers bigger than that, then you will probably want to look into using some sort of big integer class. In C#, the .NET framework has a BigInteger class. If you are working in a different language, it should not be hard to port.
If you are looking for a very good PRNG, one of the fastest, lightweight, and high quality output is the Tiny Mersenne Twister or TinyMT for short . I ported the code over to C++ and C#. it can be found here, along with a link to the original author's C code.
Rather than using a shuffling algorithm like Fisher-Yates, you might consider doing something like the following example instead:
// Get 7 random cards.
ulong Card;
ulong SevenCardHand = 0;
for (int CardLoop = 0; CardLoop < 7; CardLoop++)
{
do
{
// The card has a value of between 0 and 51. So, get a random value and
// left shift it into the proper bit position.
Card = (1UL << RandObj.Next(CardsInDeck));
} while ((SevenCardHand & Card) != 0);
SevenCardHand |= Card;
}
The above code is faster than any shuffling algorithm (at least for obtaining a subset of random cards) since it only works on 7 cards instead of 52. It also packs the cards into individual bits within a single 64 bit word. It makes evaluating poker hands much more efficient as well.
As a side, note, the best binomial coefficient calculator I have found that works with very large numbers (it accurately calculated a case that yielded over 15,000 digits in the result) can be found here.

Storing integers in a redis ordered set?

I have a system which deals with keys that have been turned into unsigned long integers (by packing short sequences into byte strings). I want to try storing these in Redis, and I want to do it in the best way possible. My concern is mainly memory efficiency.
From playing with the online REPL I notice that the two following are identical
zadd myset 1.0 "123"
zadd myset 1.0 123
This means that even if I know I want to store an integer, it has to be set as a string. I notice from the documentation that keys are just stored as char*s and that commands like SETBIT indicate that Redis is not averse to treating strings as bytestrings in the client. This hints at a slightly more efficient way of storing unsigned longs than as their string representation.
What is the best way to store unsigned longs in sorted sets?
Thanks to Andre for his answer. Here are my findings.
Storing ints directly
Redis keys must be strings. If you want to pass an integer, it has to be some kind of string. For small, well-defined sets of values, Redis will parse the string into an integer, if it is one. My guess is that it will use this int to tailor its hash function (or even statically dimension a hash table based on the value). This works for small values (examples being the default values of 64 entries of a value of up to 512). I will test for larger values during my investigation.
http://redis.io/topics/memory-optimization
Storing as strings
The alternative is squashing the integer so it looks like a string.
It looks like it is possible to use any byte string as a key.
For my application's case it actually didn't make that much difference storing the strings or the integers. I imagine that the structure in Redis undergoes some kind of alignment anyway, so there may be some pre-wasted bytes anyway. The value is hashed in any case.
Using Python for my testing, so I was able to create the values using the struct.pack. long longs weigh in at 8 bytes, which is quite large. Given the distribution of integer values, I discovered that it could actually be advantageous to store the strings, especially when coded in hex.
As redis strings are "Pascal-style":
struct sdshdr {
long len;
long free;
char buf[];
};
and given that we can store anything in there, I did a bit of extra Python to code the type into the shortest possible type:
def do_pack(prefix, number):
"""
Pack the number into the best possible string. With a prefix char.
"""
# char
if number < (1 << 8*1):
return pack("!cB", prefix, number)
# ushort
elif number < (1 << 8*2):
return pack("!cH", prefix, number)
# uint
elif number < (1 << 8*4):
return pack("!cI", prefix, number)
# ulonglong
elif number < (1 << 8*8):
return pack("!cQ", prefix, number)
This appears to make an insignificant saving (or none at all). Probably due to struct padding in Redis. This also drives Python CPU through the roof, making it somewhat unattractive.
The data I was working with was 200000 zsets of consecutive integer => (weight, random integer) × 100, plus some inverted index (based on random data). dbsize yields 1,200,001 keys.
Final memory use of server: 1.28 GB RAM, 1.32 Virtual. Various tweaks made a difference of no more than 10 megabytes either way.
So my conclusion:
Don't bother encoding into fixed-size data types. Just store the integer as a string, in hex if you want. It won't make all that much difference.
References:
http://docs.python.org/library/struct.html
http://redis.io/topics/internals-sds
I'm not sure of this answer, it's more of a suggestion than anything else. I'd have to give it a try and see if it works.
As far as I can tell, Redis only supports UTF-8 strings.
I would suggest grabbing a bit representation of your long integer and pad it accordingly to fill up the nearest byte. Encode each set of 8 bytes to a UTF-8 string (ending up with 8x*utf8_char* string) and store that in Redis. The fact that they're unsigned means that you don't care about that first bit but if you did, you could add a flag to the string.
Upon retrieving the data, you have to remember to pad each character to 8 bytes again as UTF-8 will use less bytes for the representation if the character can be stored with less bytes.
End result is that you store a maximum of 8 x 8 byte characters instead of (possibly) a maximum of 64 x 8 byte characters.

Is there a practical limit to the size of bit masks?

There's a common way to store multiple values in one variable, by using a bitmask. For example, if a user has read, write and execute privileges on an item, that can be converted to a single number by saying read = 4 (2^2), write = 2 (2^1), execute = 1 (2^0) and then add them together to get 7.
I use this technique in several web applications, where I'd usually store the variable into a field and give it a type of MEDIUMINT or whatever, depending on the number of different values.
What I'm interested in, is whether or not there is a practical limit to the number of values you can store like this? For example, if the number was over 64, you couldn't use (64 bit) integers any more. If this was the case, what would you use? How would it affect your program logic (ie: could you still use bitwise comparisons)?
I know that once you start getting really large sets of values, a different method would be the optimal solution, but I'm interested in the boundaries of this method.
Off the top of my head, I'd write a set_bit and get_bit function that could take an array of bytes and a bit offset in the array, and use some bit-twiddling to set/get the appropriate bit in the array. Something like this (in C, but hopefully you get the idea):
// sets the n-th bit in |bytes|. num_bytes is the number of bytes in the array
// result is 0 on success, non-zero on failure (offset out-of-bounds)
int set_bit(char* bytes, unsigned long num_bytes, unsigned long offset)
{
// make sure offset is valid
if(offset < 0 || offset > (num_bytes<<3)-1) { return -1; }
//set the right bit
bytes[offset >> 3] |= (1 << (offset & 0x7));
return 0; //success
}
//gets the n-th bit in |bytes|. num_bytes is the number of bytes in the array
// returns (-1) on error, 0 if bit is "off", positive number if "on"
int get_bit(char* bytes, unsigned long num_bytes, unsigned long offset)
{
// make sure offset is valid
if(offset < 0 || offset > (num_bytes<<3)-1) { return -1; }
//get the right bit
return (bytes[offset >> 3] & (1 << (offset & 0x7));
}
I've used bit masks in filesystem code where the bit mask is many times bigger than a machine word. think of it like an "array of booleans";
(journalling masks in flash memory if you want to know)
many compilers know how to do this for you. Adda bit of OO code to have types that operate senibly and then your code starts looking like it's intent, not some bit-banging.
My 2 cents.
With a 64-bit integer, you can store values up to 2^64-1, 64 is only 2^6. So yes, there is a limit, but if you need more than 64-its worth of flags, I'd be very interested to know what they were all doing :)
How many states so you need to potentially think about? If you have 64 potential states, the number of combinations they can exist in is the full size of a 64-bit integer.
If you need to worry about 128 flags, then a pair of bit vectors would suffice (2^64 * 2).
Addition: in Programming Pearls, there is an extended discussion of using a bit array of length 10^7, implemented in integers (for holding used 800 numbers) - it's very fast, and very appropriate for the task described in that chapter.
Some languages ( I believe perl does, not sure ) permit bitwise arithmetic on strings. Giving you a much greater effective range. ( (strlen * 8bit chars ) combinations )
However, I wouldn't use a single value for superimposition of more than one /type/ of data. The basic r/w/x triplet of 3-bit ints would probably be the upper "practical" limit, not for space efficiency reasons, but for practical development reasons.
( Php uses this system to control its error-messages, and I have already found that its a bit over-the-top when you have to define values where php's constants are not resident and you have to generate the integer by hand, and to be honest, if chmod didn't support the 'ugo+rwx' style syntax I'd never want to use it because i can never remember the magic numbers )
The instant you have to crack open a constants table to debug code you know you've gone too far.
Old thread, but it's worth mentioning that there are cases requiring bloated bit masks, e.g., molecular fingerprints, which are often generated as 1024-bit arrays which we have packed in 32 bigint fields (SQL Server not supporting UInt32). Bit wise operations work fine - until your table starts to grow and you realize the sluggishness of separate function calls. The binary data type would work, were it not for T-SQL's ban on bitwise operators having two binary operands.
For example .NET uses array of integers as an internal storage for their BitArray class.
Practically there's no other way around.
That being said, in SQL you will need more than one column (or use the BLOBS) to store all the states.
You tagged this question SQL, so I think you need to consult with the documentation for your database to find the size of an integer. Then subtract one bit for the sign, just to be safe.
Edit: Your comment says you're using MySQL. The documentation for MySQL 5.0 Numeric Types states that the maximum size of a NUMERIC is 64 or 65 digits. That's 212 bits for 64 digits.
Remember that your language of choice has to be able to work with those digits, so you may be limited to a 64-bit integer anyway.