Mapping two integers to one, in a unique and deterministic way

Question

Imagine two positive integers A and B. I want to combine these two into a single integer C.

There can be no other integers D and E which combine to C. So combining

Answer 1

Say you have a 32 bit integer, why not just move A into the first 16 bit half and B into the other?

def vec_pack(vec):
    return vec[0] + vec[1] * 65536;


def vec_unpack(number):
    return [number % 65536, number // 65536];

Other than this being as space efficient as possible and cheap to compute, a really cool side effect is that you can do vector math on the packed number.

a = vec_pack([2,4])
b = vec_pack([1,2])

print(vec_unpack(a+b)) # [3, 6] Vector addition
print(vec_unpack(a-b)) # [1, 2] Vector subtraction
print(vec_unpack(a*2)) # [4, 8] Scalar multiplication