If your universe has 2^64 elements, you don't want to use bit vectors or this scheme due to giant memory consumption. Instead, you'll probably want to use a hash table.
One data structure can't be the best for every situation. It's why they pay engineers the big ducks [sic].
Comments
It's true if a reasonable part of data can fit into cache. What if you've got a 2 billion subset of 64-bit integers?
If your universe has 2^64 elements, you don't want to use bit vectors or this scheme due to giant memory consumption. Instead, you'll probably want to use a hash table.
One data structure can't be the best for every situation. It's why they pay engineers the big ducks [sic].