Placevalue Ascii

Creates an ascii representation of the binary ouput of two variable function at a certian place value, arrayed on a grid.

What?

Consider the function f(x, y) = x + y. Now, make a grid of the outputs of this function for incrementing integer values of x and y, like so:

_|_0___1___2___3__
0| 0   1   2   3
1| 1   2   3   4
2| 2   3   4   5
3| 3   4   5   6

Convert each number to binary:

_|_0___1___2___3__
0| 000 001 010 011
1| 001 010 011 100
2| 010 011 100 101
3| 011 100 101 110

Reduce the grid to only the digits at a certain place value, let's say 3:

_|_0___1___2___3__
0| 0   0   0   0
1| 0   0   0   1
2| 0   0   1   1
3| 0   1   1   1

Now, replace the 1s with an asterisk, * and the 0 with a space, :


   *
  **
 ***

Script example

This command produces a 16 by 16 ascii pattern for the function f(x, y) = x + y at place value.

$ python placevalue_ascii.py "x + y" 3 16 16
            ****
           ****
          ****
         ****
        ****
       ****    *
      ****    **
     ****    ***
    ****    ****
   ****    ****
  ****    ****
 ****    ****
****    ****
***    ****    *
**    ****    **
*    ****    ***