Units

Table of contents

What is Units

Units is a program for units conversion and units calculation. The program converts quantities expressed in various scales to their equivalents in other scales. Units can only handle multiplicative scale changes. For example, it cannot convert Celsius to Fahrenheit but it can convert temperature differences between those temperature scales.

The units are defined in an external data file. Units comes with an extensive, well annotated data file that defines over 2000 units. Alternatively you can provide your own data file to suit your needs.

Here is a short example of an interactive Units session using verbose output: 

2116 units, 59 prefixes

You have: 5 kg
You want: pounds
        5 kg = 11.023113 pounds
        5 kg = (1 / 0.090718474) pounds

You have: 250 grams
You want: cups sugar
        250 grams = 1.25 cups sugar
        250 grams = (1 / 0.8) cups sugar

You have: 6 ohms
You want: siemens
        reciprocal conversion
        1 / 6 ohms = 0.16666667 siemens
        1 / 6 ohms = (1 / 6) siemens

You have: 2 btu + 450 ft lbf
You want: joules
        2 btu + 450 ft lbf = 2720.2298 joules
        2 btu + 450 ft lbf = (1 / 0.000367616) joules

You have: ergs/hour
You want: fathoms kg^2 / day
conformability error
        ergs/hour = 2.7777778e-11 kg m^2 / s^3
        fathoms kg^2 / day = 2.1166709e-05 kg^2 m / s
The Units database includes scientific values, historical units, and useful day to day values such as the densities of cooking ingredients, needed to convert between European and American recipes.

Units was written by Adrian Mariano <adrian@cam.cornell.edu>. Bug reports should be sent to the author.

Downloading Units

Units can be found on http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/units/ or one of the mirrors.

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Updated: 20 Mar 2000 tower