Wolfram Alpha goes public

Wolfram Alpha is finally the computer we were waiting for. Not only does it compute mathematical problems really fast, but it tries to give us everything about the answer, that we would like to find out. It’s like a wikipedia – just with more accurate information. Also, WolframAlpha is able to interpret user input and find out what the user is trying to find out by searching for the terms of a query in a semantic database: Weather in Guatemala, President in Germany or C6H6O.

Below the answer set that WolframAlpha delivers, there is the option for an output as pdf-file and a rather general information of where the information came from.

Convert Gray-Code to decimal/binary and back

Gray-Code is a binary code developed by Frank Gray in 1947. It is used by most absolute incremental encoders and some favor it's use for fringe projection systems that have to encode the pixel data in a series of image patterns (mostly fringes with differing widths). To convert Gray-Code from and to Decimal numbers using c++ i had to look up different approaches with varying difficulty levels. I then compiled the following algorithms, that i will be using for my own fringe projection system (keep tuned).

It's rather easy if you know how to do it. I had to find out the hard way, so here's for the rest of the world:

First the easy part: transforming a integer number dec into a Gray-code _code:

C++:
  1. void _calculateGrayCode () {
  2.     bitset<numeric_limits<int>::digits + 1> bs(dec);
  3.     bitset<numeric_limits<int>::digits + 1> gs(dec);
  4.     bitset<numeric_limits<int>::digits + 1> _code(0);
  5.     bs>>= 1;
  6.     gs ^= bs;
  7.     for (unsigned i=0; i<_code.size(); i++){
  8.         _code[i] = gs[i];
  9.         gs[i]=0;
  10.     }
  11. }

Now to the part of converting Gray-Code to binary and then decimal number: Suppose our Gray-code is inside the bitset _code.

C++:
  1. void _calculateNumber () {
  2.     bitset<numeric_limits<int>::digits + 1> gs(0);
  3.     bitset<numeric_limits<int>::digits + 1> bs(0);
  4.     for (unsigned i=0; i<_code.size(); i++){
  5.         gs[i] = _code[i];
  6.     }
  7.     bs[gs.size()-1] = gs[gs.size()-1];
  8.     for (int i=gs.size()-2; i>=0;i--){
  9.         bs[i]=bs[i+1];
  10.         bs[i]=bs[i]^gs[i];
  11.     }
  12.     _number = static_cast<int>(bs.to_ulong());
  13. }

bs holds the binary representation of the Gray-Code and _number is the decimal respresentation.

References: