Extracting a set of values from a single integer

Extracting a set of values from a single integer

I have a number of things (let's call them nodes... it doesn't matter),
conveniently referred to as node1, node2, ... nodeN.
The tricky part is that i need have a perl subroutine that takes an
integer that refers to a set of nodes. My approach is this:
Each node is given a value based on powers of 2, like this:
node1 = 1
node2 = 2
node3 = 4
node4 = 8
...
node8 = 128
etc
The value for each node is added up to produce an integer. For example,
nodes 1, 3, 4 and 7 results in as integer of 77.
Now, how would I go about creating a subroutine that takes an integer like
that and returns an array of node numbers?



PS:
The maximum amount of nodes is configurable. 16 is a reasonable max.
If I am approaching this an overly cumbersome way, I'm open to suggestions
for a better way of producing a set of nodes from a single value.