An Enumeration of Binary Self-Dual Codes of Length 32

A binary self-dual code of length 2k is a (2k, k) binary linear code C with the property that every pair of codewords in C are orthogonal. Two self-dual codes, C1 and C2, are equivalent if and only if there is a permutation of the coordinates of C1 that takes C1 into C2. The automorphism group of a binary code C is the set of all permutations of the coordinates of C that takes C into itself. The main topic of this paper is the enumeration of inequivalent binary self-dual codes. We have developed algorithms that will take lists of inequivalent small codes and produce lists of larger codes where each inequivalent code occurs only a few times. We have defined a canonical form for codes that allowed us to eliminate the overenumeration. So we have lists of inequivalent binary self-dual codes of length up to 32. The enumeration of the length 32 codes is new. Our algorithm also finds the size of the automorphism group so that we can compute the number of distinct binary self-dual codes for a specific length. This number can also be found by counting and matches our total.