i will still have to iterate through the string and the hash/dict for a small alphabet is not taking up a lot of space. by the wording it sounds like maybe you

i will still have to iterate through the string and the hash/dict for a small alphabet is not taking up a lot of space. by the wording it sounds like maybe you want people to use bitflags but your problem still seems solvable with the blog's solution (hash/dicts)