Generating truth tables in Java

David Weng picture David Weng · May 23, 2012 · Viewed 31.4k times · Source

I'm trying to print some truth tables as part of a school assignment. How can I generate a dynamic size truth table in Java?

So that printTruthTable(1) prints:

0
1

printTruthTable(3) prints:

0 0 0
0 0 1
0 1 0
0 1 1
1 0 0
1 0 1
1 1 0
1 1 1

And so on. I have been trying to implement it using recursion, but I just can't get it right.

Answer

svarog picture svarog · May 25, 2012

here's my take on your problem, all written nice and tight in a small class, just copy/paste

notice how I used modulo2 (the % sign) to get 0's and 1's from the loop indices

public class TruthTable {
    private static void printTruthTable(int n) {
        int rows = (int) Math.pow(2,n);

        for (int i=0; i<rows; i++) {
            for (int j=n-1; j>=0; j--) {
                System.out.print((i/(int) Math.pow(2, j))%2 + " ");
            }
            System.out.println();
        }
    }
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        printTruthTable(3); //enter any natural int
    }
}