What is "unary"

1923, from Latin unus "one" (see one) on model of binary, etc.

a. 1 Consisting of or involving a single element or component. 2 (context mathematics programming computer engineering English) Of an operation, function, procedure(,) or logic gate, taking exactly one operand, argument, parameter(,) or input; having domain of dimension 1. n. 1 (context mathematics English) The unary numeral system; the bijective base-1 numeral system. 2 (context information theory English) unary coding, an entropy encoding for natural numbers.

adj. consisting of or involving a single element or component; "in a unary operation in a mathematical system one element is used to yield a single result"

Unary may refer to:

• Unary numeral system, the simplest numeral system to represent natural numbers
• Unary function, a function that takes one argument; in computer science, a unary operator is a subset of unary function
• Unary operation, a kind of mathematical operator that has only one operand
• Unary coding, an entropy encoding that represents a number n with n − 1 ones followed by a zero