Ternary (from Latin ternarius) or trinary is an adjective meaning "composed of three items". It can refer to:
Mathematics and logic Ternary numeral system, a base-3 counting system Balanced ternary, a positional numeral system, useful for comparison logic Ternary logic, a logic system with the values true, false, and some other value Ternary plot or ternary graph, a plot that shows the ratios of three proportions Ternary relation, a finitary relation in which the number of places in the relation is three Ternary operation, an operation that takes three parameters Ternary function, a function that takes three arguments
Computing Ternary signal, a signal that can assume three significant values Ternary computer, a computer using a ternary numeral system Ternary tree, a tree data structure in computer science Ternary search tree, a ternary (three-way) tree data structure of strings Ternary search, a computer science technique for finding the minimum or maximum of a function Ternary heap, a data structure in computer science Ternary Golay code, a perfect [11, 6, 5] ternary linear code ?:, a ternary conditional operator used for basic conditional expressions in several programming languages
Other uses Ternary complex, a complex formed by the interaction of three molecules Ternary compound, a type of chemical compound Ternary form, a form used for structuring music Ternary name for any taxon below the rank of species
See also Tertiary (disambiguation) Binary (disambiguation) Quaternary (disambiguation)