i had to write a text file with a 7-bit gray code for work. rather than spending 10 minutes figuring out the gray code by hand, I decided to do spend a half hour hacking something up to do it for me.

1. what’s a gray code?

gray codes, aka reflected binary codes, are a sequence of binary numbers that, rather progressing in order, progress by with each value differing by one bit. gray codes are useful for error detection/correction in switching, and can be found in the wild when using karnaugh maps, genetic algorithms, and real-time error detection/correction in hardware.

2. the trick to gray codes:

intuitively, gray codes seem easy: duh, just change one bit at a time. constructing a full cycle of gray codes that starts at 0^n and progresses until it loops back to 0^n is more challenging. extending that construction for n>5 is an absurd human task, without knowing the trick:

• construct the n = 1 list (0, 1)
• flip and append the list (0, 1, 1, 0)
• construct the n = 2 list (0, 0, 1, 1)
• combine the n = 2 list and n = 1 list (00, 01, 11, 10)
• flip and append the list (00, 01, 11, 10, 10, 11, 01, 00)
• construct the n = 3 list (0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1)
• combine the n = 3 list and n = 2 + 1 list (000, 001, 011, 010...)
• continue until n

this is super easy to do in paper. this is less easy to figure out in code. python makes it stupid easy.

3. the code

by no means the most efficient, but quick and dirty and got the job done.

import sys

greylen = int(sys.argv[1])
var_array = []

for num in range(greylen):
  temp_zer = []
  temp_one = []
  for ind in range(pow(2,num)):
    temp_zer.append(0)
    temp_one.append(1)
  var_array.append(temp_zer + temp_one)

for num in range(int(greylen)):
  cur_arr = var_array[len(var_array)-num-1]
  while len(cur_arr)