unary

<programming>

1. (or "monadic") A description of a function or operator which takes one argument, e.g. the unary minus operator which negates its argument.

The term is part of the sequence nullary, unary, binary, ternary describing functions of zero to three arguments.

<data, humour>

2. Base one. A number base with only one digit, namely zero, which can therefore only be used to express the number zero. Attempting to add one to zero results in an infinite sequence of carries. Numbers in unary notation can be represented particularly efficiently however since each digit requires no storage.

Last updated: 2019-07-15

Nearby terms:

UMDL ♦ UML ♦ uML ♦ UMTS ♦ unary ♦ unary operator ♦ UNC ♦ UNCL ♦ UNCOL ♦ uncompression

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