Unary Code

• Unary coding, sometimes called thermometer code, is an entropy encoding that represents a natural number n, with n ones followed by a zero (if natural number is understood as non-negative integer) or with n − 1 ones followed by a zero (if natural number is understood as strictly positive integer).
• For example 5 is represented as 111110 or 11110. Some representations use n or n − 1 zeros followed by a one. The ones and zeros are interchangeable without loss of generality.
• Unary coding is both a prefix-free code and a self-synchronizing code.

n (non-negative)	n (strictly positive)	Unary code	Alternative
0	1	0	1
1	2	10	01
2	3	110	001
3	4	1110	0001
4	5	11110	00001
5	6	111110	000001
6	7	1111110	0000001
7	8	11111110	00000001
8	9	111111110	000000001
9	10	1111111110	0000000001

• A generalized version of unary coding is able to represent numbers much more efficiently than standard unary coding.
• Here’s an example of generalized unary coding for integers from 1 through 15 that requires only 7 bits (where three bits are arbitrarily chosen in place of a single one in standard unary to show the number). Note that the representation is cyclic where one uses markers to represent higher integers in higher cycles.

n	Unary code	Generalized unary
0	0	0000000
1	10	0000111
2	110	0001110
3	1110	0011100
4	11110	0111000
5	111110	1110000
6	1111110	0010111
7	11111110	0101110
8	111111110	1011100
9	1111111110	0111001
10	11111111110	1110010
11	111111111110	0100111
12	1111111111110	1001110
13	11111111111110	0011101
14	111111111111110	0111010
15	1111111111111110	1110100