sdsl-lite VS RoaringBitmap

Succinct Data Structures [0] [1]. It encompass many different underlying data structure types but the overarching idea is that you want small data size while still keeping "big O" run time.

In other words, data structures that effectively reach a 'practical' entropy lower bound while still keeping asymptotic run time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succinct_data_structure

[1] https://github.com/simongog/sdsl-lite

The book mentioned in another comment is probably the best way to go. But FYI, documentation for some data structures include references. An SDSL-lite example can be found here. And its equivalent in SDSL-RS can be found here.

I was recently reading about Roaring https://roaringbitmap.org/ which is a highly optimized compressed bitset implementation. I reccomend reading about it if you are interested in this sort of thing. The talk at https://roaringbitmap.org/talks/ is especially good.

However, I would love compressed (not just packed) bitsets too, which is something different to me. I would make it another class with a similar interface, based on something like roaring. It doesn't need to be in the standard, but it would be nice if the API was a such that one could easily swap implementations.

As an aside if you find yourself having to compute them on the fly, know that the Roaring Bitmaps libraries is the way to go [1]. The bitmaps are compressed, and can be streamed directly into SIMD computations (batching XORs and popcnts 256 bits wide!). The Jaccard index is just intersection_len / union_len [2] away

[1] https://roaringbitmap.org/

[2] https://roaringbitmap.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#roaringbitma...

Use a two stage approach, with a bloom/cuckoo filter stored as a https://roaringbitmap.org/ in memory. Then a secondary key/value store on disk (bolt or anything else).

As an aside, if you're dealing with large bit sets, you might also want to evaluate Roaring Bitmaps.

Sidetracking a bit the conversation. What a coincidence that the author (Lemire) is also represented on Today's #1 "Ask HN: What are some cool but obscure data structures you know about?" as he is the main contributor of RoaringBitmap https://github.com/RoaringBitmap/RoaringBitmap and one of the main authors of the data structure.