Provided by: tcllib_1.17-dfsg-1_all 
NAME
units - unit conversion
SYNOPSIS
package require Tcl 8.1
package require units ?2.1?
::units::convert value targetUnits
::units::reduce unitString
::units::new name baseUnits
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
DESCRIPTION
This library provides a conversion facility from a variety of scientific and engineering
shorthand notations into floating point numbers. This allows application developers to
easily convert values with different units into uniformly scaled numbers.
The units conversion facility is also able to convert between compatible units. If, for
example, a application is expecting a value in ohms (Resistance), and the user specifies
units of milliwebers/femtocoulomb, the conversion routine will handle it appropriately.
An error will be generated if an incorrect conversion is attempted.
Values are scaled from one set of units to another by dimensional analysis. Both the
value units and the target units are reduced into primitive units and a scale factor.
Units are checked for compatibility, and the scale factors are applied by multiplication
and division. This technique is extremely flexible and quite robust.
New units and new unit abbreviations can be defined in terms of existing units and
abbreviations. It is also possible to define a new primitive unit, although that will
probably be unnecessary. New units will most commonly be defined to accommodate non-SI
measurement systems, such as defining the unit inch as 2.54 cm.
COMMANDS
::units::convert value targetUnits
Converts the value string into a floating point number, scaled to the specified
targetUnits. The value string may contain a number and units. If units are
specified, then they must be compatible with the targetUnits. If units are not
specified for the value, then it will be scaled to the target units. For example,
% ::units::convert "2.3 miles" km
3.7014912
% ::units::convert 300m/s miles/hour
671.080887616
% ::units::convert "1.0 m kg/s^2" newton
1.0
% ::units::convert 1.0 millimeter
1000.0
::units::reduce unitString
Returns a unit string consisting of a scale factor followed by a space separated
list of sorted and reduced primitive units. The reduced unit string may include a
forward-slash (separated from the surrounding primitive subunits by spaces)
indicating that the remaining subunits are in the denominator. Generates an error
if the unitString is invalid.
% ::units::reduce pascal
1000.0 gram / meter second second
::units::new name baseUnits
Creates a new unit conversion with the specified name. The new unit name must be
only alphabetic (upper or lower case) letters. The baseUnits string can consist of
any valid units conversion string, including constant factors, numerator and
denominator parts, units with prefixes, and exponents. The baseUnits may contain
any number of subunits, but it must reduce to primitive units. BaseUnits could
also be the string -primitive to represent a new kind of quantity which cannot be
derived from other units. But you probably would not do that unless you have
discovered some kind of new universal property.
% ::units::new furlong "220 yards"
% ::units::new fortnight "14 days"
% ::units::convert 100m/s furlongs/fortnight
601288.475303
UNIT STRING FORMAT
Value and unit string format is quite flexible. It is possible to define virtually any
combination of units, prefixes, and powers. Valid unit strings must conform to these
rules.
• A unit string consists of an optional scale factor followed by zero or more
subunits. The scale factor must be a valid floating point number, and may or may
not be separated from the subunits. The scale factor could be negative.
• Subunits are separated form each other by one or more separator characters, which
are space (" "), hyphen ("-"), asterisk ("*"), and forward-slash ("/"). Sure, go
ahead and complain about using a minus sign ("-") to represent multiplication. It
just isn't sound mathematics, and, by rights, we should require everyone to use the
asterisk ("*") to separate all units. But the bottom line is that complex unit
strings like m-kg/s^2 are pleasantly readable.
• The forward-slash seperator ("/") indicates that following subunits are in the
denominator. There can be at most one forward-slash separator.
• Subunits can be floating point scale factors, but with the exception of the leading
scale factor, they must be surrounded by valid separators. Subunit scale factors
cannot be negative. (Remember that the hyphen is a unit separator.)
• Subunits can be valid units or abbreviations. They may include a prefix. They may
include a plural suffix "s" or "es". They may also include a power string denoted
by a circumflex ("^"), followed by a integer, after the unit name (or plural
suffix, if there is one). Negative exponents are not allowed. (Remember that the
hyphen is a unit separator.)
EXAMPLE VALID UNIT STRINGS
Unit String Reduced Unit String
------------------------------------------------------------
meter 1.0 meter
kilometer 1000.0 meter
km 1000.0 meter
km/s 1000.0 meter / second
/microsecond 1000000.0 / second
/us 1000000.0 / second
kg-m/s^2 1000.0 gram meter / second second
30second 30.0 second
30 second 30.0 second
30 seconds 30.0 second
200*meter/20.5*second 9.75609756098 meter / second
SI UNITS
The standard SI units are predefined according to NIST Special Publication 330. Standard
units for both SI Base Units (Table 1) and SI Derived Units with Special Names (Tables 3a
and 3b) are included here for reference. Each standard unit name and abbreviation are
included in this package.
SI BASE UNITS
Quantity Unit Name Abbr.
---------------------------------------------
Length meter m
Mass kilogram kg
Time second s
Current ampere A
Temperature kelvin K
Amount mole mol
Luminous Intensity candela cd
SI DERIVED UNITS WITH SPECIAL NAMES
Quantity Unit Name Abbr. Units Base Units
--------------------------------------------------------------------
plane angle radian rad m/m m/m
solid angle steradian sr m^2/m^2 m^2/m^2
frequency hertz Hz /s
force newton N m-kg/s^2
pressure pascal Pa N/m^2 kg/m-s^2
energy, work joule J N-m m^2-kg/s^2
power, radiant flux watt W J/s m^2-kg/s^3
electric charge coulomb C s-A
electric potential volt V W/A m^2-kg/s^3-A
capacitance farad F C/V s^4-A^2/m^2-kg
electric resistance ohm V/A m^2-kg/s^3-A^2
electric conductance siemens S A/V s^3-A^2/m^2-kg
magnetic flux weber Wb V-s m^2-kg/s^2-A
magnetic flux density tesla T Wb/m^2 kg/s^2-A
inductance henry H Wb/A m^2-kg/s^2-A^2
luminous flux lumen lm cd-sr
illuminance lux lx lm/m^2 cd-sr/m^2
activity (of a
radionuclide) becquerel Bq /s
absorbed dose gray Gy J/kg m^2/s^2
dose equivalent sievert Sv J/kg m^2/s^2
Note that the SI unit kilograms is actually implemented as grams because 1e-6 kilogram = 1
milligram, not 1 microkilogram. The abbreviation for Electric Resistance (ohms), which is
the omega character, is not supported.
Also note that there is no support for Celsius or Farenheit temperature. The units
conversion routines can only scale values with multiplication and division, so it is not
possible to convert from thermodynamic temperature (kelvins) to absolute degrees Celsius
or Farenheit. Conversion of thermodynamic quantities, such as thermal expansion (per unit
temperature), however, are easy to add to the units library.
SI Units can have a multiple or sub-multiple prefix. The prefix or its abbreviation
should appear before the unit, without spaces. Compound prefixes are not allowed, and a
prefix should never be used alone. These prefixes are defined in Table 5 of Special
Publication 330.
SI PREFIXES
Prefix Name Abbr. Factor
---------------------------------------
yotta Y 1e24
zetta Z 1e21
exa E 1e18
peta P 1e15
tera T 1e12
giga G 1e9
mega M 1e6
kilo k 1e3
hecto h 1e2
deka da 1e1
deca 1e1
deci d 1e-1
centi c 1e-2
milli m 1e-3
micro u 1e-6
nano n 1e-9
pico p 1e-12
femto f 1e-15
atto a 1e-18
zepto z 1e-21
yocto y 1e-24
Note that we define the same prefix with both the USA ("deka") and non-USA ("deca")
spellings. Also note that we take the liberty of allowing "micro" to be typed as a "u"
instead of the Greek character mu.
Many non-SI units are commonly used in applications. Appendix B.8 of NIST Special
Publication 811 lists many non-SI conversion factors. It is not possible to include all
possible unit definitions in this package. In some cases, many different conversion
factors exist for a given unit, depending on the context. (The appendix lists over 40
conversions for British thermal units!) Application specific conversions can always be
added using the new command, but some well known and often used conversions are included
in this package.
NON-SI UNITS
Unit Name Abbr. Base Units
--------------------------------------------------
angstrom 1.0E-10 m
astronomicalUnit AU 1.495979E11 m
atmosphere 1.01325E5 Pa
bar 1.0E5 Pa
calorie 4.1868 J
curie 3.7E10 Bq
day 8.64E4 s
degree 1.745329E-2 rad
erg 1.0E-7 J
faraday 9.648531 C
fermi 1.0E-15 m
foot ft 3.048E-1 m
gauss 1.0E-4 T
gilbert 7.957747E-1 A
grain gr 6.479891E-5 kg
hectare ha 1.0E4 m^2
hour h 3.6E3 s
inch in 2.54E-2 m
lightYear 9.46073E15 m
liter L 1.0E-3 m^3
maxwell Mx 1.0E-8 Wb
mho 1.0 S
micron 1.0E-6 m
mil 2.54E-5 m
mile mi 1.609344E3 m
minute min 6.0E1 s
parsec pc 3.085E16 m
pica 4.233333E-3 m
pound lb 4.535924E-1 kg
revolution 6.283185 rad
revolutionPerMinute rpm 1.047198E-1 rad/s
yard yd 9.144E-1 m
year 3.1536E7 s
QUANTITIES AND DERIVED UNITS WITH SPECIAL NAMES
This units conversion package is limited specifically to unit reduction, comparison, and
scaling. This package does not consider any of the quantity names for either base or
derived units. A similar implementation or an extension in a typed or object-oriented
language might introduce user defined types for the quantities. Quantity type checking
could be used, for example, to ensure that all length values properly reduced to meters,
or that all velocity values properly reduced to meters/second.
A C implementation of this package has been created to work in conjunction with the
Simplified Wrapper Interface Generator (http://www.swig.org/). That package (units.i)
exploits SWIG's typemap system to automatically convert script quantity strings into
floating point quantities. Function arguments are specified as quantity types (e.g.,
typedef float Length), and target units (expected by the C application code) are specified
in an associative array. Default units are also defined for each quantity type, and are
applied to any unit-less quantity strings.
A units system enhanced with quantity type checking might benefit from inclusion of other
derived types which are expressed in terms of special units, as illustrated in Table 2 of
NIST Publication 330. The quantity area, for example, could be defined as units properly
reducing to meter^2, although the utility of defining a unit named square meter is
arguable.
REFERENCES
The unit names, abbreviations, and conversion values are derived from those published by
the United States Department of Commerce Technology Administration, National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST) in NIST Special Publication 330: The International System
of Units (SI) and NIST Special Publication 811: Guide for the Use of the International
System of Units (SI). Both of these publications are available (as of December 2000) from
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Reference/contents.html
The ideas behind implementation of this package is based in part on code written in 1993
by Adrian Mariano which performed dimensional analysis of unit strings using fixed size
tables of C structs. After going missing in the late 1990's, Adrian's code has reappeared
in the GNU Units program at http://www.gnu.org/software/units/
AUTHORS
Robert W. Techentin
BUGS, IDEAS, FEEDBACK
This document, and the package it describes, will undoubtedly contain bugs and other
problems. Please report such in the category units of the Tcllib Trackers
[http://core.tcl.tk/tcllib/reportlist]. Please also report any ideas for enhancements you
may have for either package and/or documentation.
KEYWORDS
angle, constants, conversion, distance, radians, unit
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Mayo Foundation