Annotation of src/usr.bin/units/units.1, Revision 1.4
1.4 ! deraadt 1: .\" $OpenBSD: units.1,v 1.3 1996/06/26 05:42:15 deraadt Exp $
! 2: .\" converted to new format by deraadt@openbsd.org
! 3: .Dd July 14, 1993
! 4: .Dt UNITS 1
! 5: .Os
! 6: .Sh NAME
! 7: .Nm uniq
! 8: .Nd conversion program
! 9: .Sh SYNOPSIS
! 10: .Nm
! 11: .Op Fl f Ar filename
! 12: .Op Fl q
! 13: .Op Fl v
! 14: .Ar from-unit
! 15: .Ar to-unit
! 16: .Sh ARGUMENTS
! 17: .Bl -tag -width Ds
! 18: .It Fl f Ar filename
1.1 deraadt 19: Specifies the name of the units data file to load.
1.4 ! deraadt 20: .It Fl q
1.1 deraadt 21: Suppresses prompting of the user for units and the display of statistics
22: about the number of units loaded.
1.4 ! deraadt 23: .It Fl v
1.1 deraadt 24: Prints the version number.
1.4 ! deraadt 25: .It Ar from-unit Ar to-unit
1.1 deraadt 26: Allows a single unit conversion to be done directly from the command
27: line. No prompting will occur. The units program will print out
28: only the result of this single conversion.
1.4 ! deraadt 29: .El
! 30: .Sh DESCRIPTION
1.1 deraadt 31: The units program converts quantities expression in various scales to
32: their equivalents in other scales. The units program can only
33: handle multiplicative scale changes. It cannot convert Centigrade
34: to Fahrenheit, for example. It works interactively by prompting
35: the user for input:
1.4 ! deraadt 36: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 37: .nf
38: You have: meters
39: You want: feet
40: * 3.2808399
41: / 0.3048
42:
43: You have: cm^3
44: You want: gallons
45: * 0.00026417205
46: / 3785.4118
47: .fi
1.4 ! deraadt 48: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 49: Powers of units can be specified using the '^' character as shown in
50: the example, or by simple concatenation: 'cm3' is equivalent to 'cm^3'.
51: Multiplication of units can be specified by using spaces, a dash or
52: an asterisk. Division of units is indicated by the slash ('/').
53: Note that multiplication has a higher precedence than division,
54: so 'm/s/s' is the same as 'm/s^2' or 'm/s s'.
55: If the user enters incompatible unit types, the units program will
56: print a message indicating that the units are not conformable and
57: it will display the reduced form for each unit:
1.4 ! deraadt 58: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 59: .nf
60: You have: ergs/hour
61: You want: fathoms kg^2 / day
62: conformability error
63: 2.7777778e-11 kg m^2 / sec^3
64: 2.1166667e-05 kg^2 m / sec
65: .fi
1.4 ! deraadt 66: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 67: The conversion information is read from a units data file. The default
68: file includes definitions for most familiar units, abbreviations and
69: metric prefixes. Some constants of nature included are:
1.4 ! deraadt 70: .Bl -tag -width mercury
! 71: .It pi
! 72: ratio of circumference to diameter
! 73: .It c
! 74: speed of light
! 75: .It e
! 76: charge on an electron
! 77: .It g
! 78: acceleration of gravity
! 79: .It force
! 80: same as g
! 81: .It mole
! 82: Avogadro's number
! 83: .It water
! 84: pressure per unit height of water
! 85: .It mercury
! 86: pressure per unit height of mercury
! 87: .It au
! 88: astronomical unit
! 89: .El
! 90: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 91: \'Pound' is a unit of mass. Compound names are run together
92: so 'poundforce' is a unit of force. British units that differ from their
93: US counterparts are prefixed with 'br', and currency is prefixed with
94: its country name: 'belgiumfranc', 'britainpound'. When searching for
95: a unit, if the specified string does not appear exactly as a unit
96: name, then the units program will try to remove a trailing 's' or
97: a trailing 'es' and check again for a match.
1.4 ! deraadt 98: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 99: All of these definitions can be read in the standard units file, or you
100: can supply your own file. A unit is specified on a single line by
101: giving its name and an equivalence. One should be careful to define
102: new units in terms of old ones so that a reduction leads to the
103: primitive units which are marked with '!' characters.
104: The units program will not detect infinite loops that could be caused
105: by careless unit definitions.
1.4 ! deraadt 106: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 107: Prefixes are defined in the same was as standard units, but with
108: a trailing dash at the end of the prefix name.
1.4 ! deraadt 109: .Sh BUGS
1.1 deraadt 110: The effect of including a '/' in a prefix is surprising.
1.4 ! deraadt 111: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 112: Exponents entered by the user can be only one digit.
113: You can work around this by multiplying several terms.
1.4 ! deraadt 114: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 115: The user must use | to indicate division of numbers and / to
116: indicate division of symbols. This distinction should not
117: be necessary.
1.4 ! deraadt 118: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 119: The program contains various arbitrary limits on the length
120: of the units converted and on the length of the data file.
1.4 ! deraadt 121: .Pp
1.1 deraadt 122: The program should use a hash table to store units so that
123: it doesn't take so long to load the units list and check
124: for duplication.
1.4 ! deraadt 125: .Sh FILES
1.1 deraadt 126: /usr/share/misc/units.lib - the standard units library
1.4 ! deraadt 127: .Sh AUTHOR
1.1 deraadt 128: Adrian Mariano (adrian@cam.cornell.edu or mariano@geom.umn.edu)
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