Daniel Martin wrote:
> That pulls bytes off m five bytes at a time.  The goal is to try to
> strike a balance between letting m get too large (which makes
> manipulating it in memory slightly slower) and letting pack - written
> in C - do its job efficiently.  (pack is going to be more efficient
> the larger the input)

Thanks (and to everyone else who replied) for a really good bunch of 
suggestions.

Packing ten bytes at a time seems to be optimal and has shaved a whole 
load of the execution time.

Thanks again,
Richard :)

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