NAME

units - conversion program

SYNOPSIS

units [ -v ] [ file ]

DESCRIPTION

Units converts quantities expressed in various standard scales to their equivalents in other scales. It works interactively in this fashion:

you have: inch
you want: cm


    * 2.54
	/ 0.3937008
    

A quantity is specified as a multiplicative combination of units and floating point numbers. Operators have the following precedence:

+ -	add and subtract
* / × ÷	multiply and divide
catenation	multiply
² ³ ^	exponentiation
|	divide
( ... )	grouping
    

Most familiar units, abbreviations, and metric prefixes are recognized, together with a generous leavening of exotica and a few constants of nature including:

pi,π	ratio of circumference to diameter
c	speed of light  
e	charge on an electron 
g	acceleration of gravity  
force	same as g  
mole	Avogadro's number   
water	pressure head per unit height of water    
au	astronomical unit   

The is a unit of mass. Compound names are run together, e.g. British units that differ from their US counterparts are prefixed thus: Currency is denoted etc.

The complete list of units can be found in /lib/units. A file argument to units specifies a file to be used instead of /lib/units. The -v flag causes units to print its entire database.

EXAMPLE

you have: 15 pounds force/in²
you want: atm
	* 1.020689
	/ 0.9797299

FILES

/lib/units

SOURCE

/appl/cmd/units.y
/appl/cmd/units.b

BUGS

Since units does only multiplicative scale changes, it can convert Kelvin to Rankine but not Centigrade to Fahrenheit, except that the latter is handled as a special case.
Currency conversions are only as accurate as the last time someone updated /lib/units.