In mathematics, the weight enumerator polynomial of a binary linear code specifies the number of words of each possible Hamming weight.
Let
be a binary linear code length n. The weight distribution is the sequence of numbers

giving the number of codewords c in C having weight t as t ranges from 0 to n. The weight enumerator is the bivariate polynomial

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Denote the dual code of
by

(where < , > denotes the vector dot product and which is taken over
).
The MacWilliams identity states that

The identity is named after Jessie MacWilliams.
The distance distribution or inner distribution of a code C of size M and length n is the sequence of numbers

where i ranges from 0 to n. The distance enumerator polynomial is

and when C is linear this is equal to the weight enumerator.
The outer distribution of C is the 2n-by-n+1 matrix B with rows indexed by elements of GF(2)n and columns indexed by integers 0...n, and entries

The sum of the rows of B is M times the inner distribution vector (A0,...,An).
A code C is regular if the rows of B corresponding to the codewords of C are all equal.