my $packed = join '', unpack '(a3x)*', pack 'l*', @sint24s;
[download]

Rather than the above,
    my $packed = pack '(l<X)*', @array;
is more concise, probably faster (but this latter not checked).

A shame there seems to be no way to get rid of the final  map on the unpacking side.

>perl -wMstrict -le
"use Test::More 'no_plan';
 use List::Util qw(shuffle);
 ;;
 sub rand_s24 { return map { int(rand 2**24) - 2**23 } 1 .. $_[0]; }
 ;;
 use constant MIN_S24  => -(2**23);
 use constant MAX_S24  => -MIN_S24() - 1;
 use constant VALUES   => (0, 1, -1, MIN_S24, MAX_S24);
 use constant N_VALUES => scalar(@{[ VALUES ]});
 use constant MAX_LEN  => 25;
 ;;
 for my $pass (1 .. 200) {
   for my $len (1 .. MAX_LEN) {
     my @to_pack = (rand_s24($len - N_VALUES), VALUES)[-$len .. -1];
     @to_pack = shuffle @to_pack;
     $len == @to_pack or die qq{bad len: array to pack};
     ;;
     my $packed = pack '(l<X)*', @to_pack;
     length($packed) == 3 * $len or die qq{bad len: packed string};
     ;;
     my @unpacked =
       map { unpack('l<', qq{\x00$_})/256 } unpack '(a3)*', $packed;
     $len == @unpacked or die qq{bad len: unpacked array};
     ;;
     is_deeply \@unpacked, \@to_pack,
               sprintf('pass %d: len %d', $pass, $len);
     }
   }
"
ok 1 - pass 1: len 1
ok 2 - pass 1: len 2
... (4996 lines elided) ...
ok 4999 - pass 200: len 24
ok 5000 - pass 200: len 25
1..5000
[download]

my $packed = pack '(l<X)*', @array; is more concise, probably faster

That's clever, but does have the limitation that you cannot produce a big-endian stream.

Mind, I don't know if there is any hardware that accepts 24-bit BE values.

A shame there seems to be no way to get rid of the final map on the unpacking side.

Agreed. This isn't the first time that I've wished that pack would allow the insertion of values from the template.

I've also wished for a more generic version of vec that allowed arbitrary numbers of bits, rather than just powers of 2.

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

Mind, I don't know if there is any hardware that accepts 24-bit BE values.

I don't know if there are still any out in the wild and I don't recall their endian-ness but ICL 1900 series machines used a 6-bit character representation and had 24-bit words.

Update: Corrected typo, supplied missing word :-(

Cheers,

JohnGG