# Ternary (trinary) vs. binary

## Computers

We all know the binary system but a few heard about ternary (trinary) system; one of the first computer in Soviet Russia was using ternary system but it went out of fashion and binary system took over.

### Binary system

In binary system or base 2, the unit of information is the bit (BInary digiT) and everything is represented as 0 and 1, low voltage, high voltage, then one level up we have byte which has 8 bits.

In Python, we have bin function to transform an integer into binary representation and int function to parse a bit string into integer.

  print(int('1011', 2))
print(bin(11))
11
0b1011


Using binary system is very easy to represent natural numbers (positive integers) while for negative integers we need to use one bit to store the sign as either 1's or 2's complement.

### Ternary (trinary) system

As the name suggests, ternary (or trinary) system is a numeral system with 3 possible states and along the same lines we have the trit (TRInary digiT) and tryte (TRinary bYTE) which has 3 trits.

On the other hand, in ternary system we have two representations:

1. unbalanced ternary

2. balanced ternary

#### 1. Unbalanced ternary

First thing first, let's convert between ternary and decimal representations. Parsing ternary into decimal is easy, just use Python built-in function.

  print(int('1021', 3))
34


Or we can write our own function ter_to_dec - ternary to decimal conversion. Note that it is MST (Most Significant Trit) first representation so we need to reverse the input trits.

 def ter_to_dec(trits):
return sum([3**i * int(t) for i, t in enumerate(reversed(trits))])

print(ter_to_dec('1021'))
34


And the inverse function, dec_to_ter - decimal to unbalanced ternary, a recursive modulo operation collecting the reminder r at each step.

  def dec_to_ter(d):
q, r = divmod(d, 3)
if q == 0:
return '0t' + str(r)
else:
return dec_to_ter(q) + str(r)

print(dec_to_ter(34))
0t1021


So far, so good, nothing fancy under the sun, instead of base 2 we use base 3, everything else stays the same.

#### 2. Balanced ternary

In balanced ternary the 3 states are balanced around 0 and instead of 2 we use -1 so the states are 0, 1 and -1 or even simpler: 0, + and -.

Two helper functions to transform between trit and char: chr - balanced trit to char, bal - the inverse, char to trit.

  alphabet = '0+-'
def chr(n):
return alphabet[n]

print('to char:')
print(chr(0))
print(chr(1))
print(chr(-1))

def bal(c):
return alphabet[:-1].find(c) # remove - char so find returns -1 on not found

print('\nto trit:')
print(bal('0'))
print(bal('+'))
print(bal('-'))
to char:
0
+
-

to trit:
0
1
-1


Now, the same ternary to decimal conversion, this time is important to remember that balanced ternary uses LST (Least Significant Trit) first, no need to reverse the trits anymore.

  def bal_to_dec(trits):
return sum([3**i * bal(t) for i, t in enumerate(trits)])

Let's try some trits to decimal conversion:

  print(bal_to_dec('000'))
print(bal_to_dec('+++'))
print(bal_to_dec('0-+'))
0
13
6


But what happens if we flip the trits? + becomes - and vice-versa, while 0 stays the same.

  print(bal_to_dec('---'))
print(bal_to_dec('0+-'))
-13
-6


MAGIC huh? This is the power of balanced ternary system on steroids, negative numbers are first-class citizens, we don't need to waste an extra bit for sign as we do in binary system.

  print(bal_to_dec('0+-0+++0-'))
print(bal_to_dec('0-+0---0+'))
-5514
5514


And last, decimal to balanced ternary conversion, the implementation is the same as for unbalanced ternary with the exception that we need to convert 2 to -1 and increment (carry) the quotient.

  def dec_to_bal(d):
q, r = divmod(d, 3)
if r == 2:
q += 1
r = -1
if q == 0:
return chr(r)
else:
return chr(r) + dec_to_bal(q)

print(dec_to_bal(6))
print(bal_to_dec('0-+'))
print(dec_to_bal(-9223))
print(bal_to_dec('-++00+---'))
0-+
6
-++00+---
-9223


This is it, ternary system, as you might guess the addition/multiplication and all other arithmetic operations work as expected, trit by trit, also as an exercise for the reader, floating points representation and …

Happy New Year!!!