Embodiments relate to polygon recovery from a +1/−1 description of a plurality of polygons of a very large scale integrated (VLSI) mask for production of a VLSI semiconductor device. An aspect includes receiving a set of data comprising the +1/−1 description of the plurality of polygons of the VLSI mask, the +1/−1 description comprising a plurality of corners. Another aspect includes determining a 4-directional data structure, a Mm value comprising a first limit value, and a Mp value comprising a second limit value for each of the plurality of corners. Another aspect includes recovering the plurality of polygons from the set of data by assigning each of the plurality of corners to a single polygon based on the 4-directional data structure, the Mm value, and the Mp value of each of the plurality of corners, and determining an order of the respective corners of each polygon.