Patent ID: 7415473

Claim:
A machine-implemented method of representing a collection of objects, the method comprising: providing one or more data structure definitions, the one or more data structure definitions defining a set object to represent the collection of objects as being within a computer-representable universal set that is a subset of a universal set defined for the collection of objects, wherein the computer-representable universal set is limited to data types representable within a computer system; and generating, with a computer-implemented constructor using the one or more data structure definitions, a set object representing the collection of objects, the set object being a one-dimensional set object comprising: a first list of knot elements, each of the knot elements being a value; a second list representing the knot elements that the one-dimensional set includes such that the second list represents the one-dimensional set includes values of corresponding knot elements; and a third list representing elements, other than the knot elements, that are included in the one-dimensional set object such that the third list represents the one-dimensional set includes values between the values corresponding to the knot elements; wherein the second and third lists are defined to be alternating elements of a one-dimensional bit vector, where bits of the second list are a one or zero to indicate an existence or non-existence of the knot elements, and the third list is defined to indicate whether the one-dimensional set includes a range that is bound by one or more knot elements based on bits that are a one or zero indicating an existence or non-existence of an element in a range.