Groebner bases and combinatorics for binary codes

In this paper we introduce a binomial ideal derived from a binary linear code. We present some applications of a Gr"obner basis of this ideal with respect to a total degree ordering. In the first application we give a decoding method for the code. By associating the code with the set of cycles in a graph, we can solve the problem of finding all codewords of minimal length (minimal cycles in a graph), and show how to find a minimal cycle basis. Finally we discuss some results on the computation of the Gr"obner basis.