Units package (was Method names)

David N. Smith dnsmith at watson.ibm.com
Wed Nov 4 21:05:47 UTC 1998


At 4:09 -0500 11/4/98, JArchibald at aol.com wrote:
>Dave Smith (of IBM Research) did a units package of some completeness many
>years ago. I was surprised when he did it how much it clarified things in
>certain cases. This stuff may be in his book (early one).
>
>Jerry.

Jerry:

I still have that code someplace, probably.

Since I wrote it I have run into two guys who wrote a much better, open
ended (ie, define your own units), and much faster package for the
engineering department of a large aerospace(?) company. The technique used
to make it really fast should have been patented but the company they
worked for didn't want to do it. They were going to publish, and at one
point we agreed I'd even write the paper, but somehow it never got done.

Anyhow there is a truly neat trick which can let units accumulate (ie, feet
cubed * seconds squared * meters) and rapidly figure out later what's
included.

I'll send some mail and see what the current state of publicity is.

Dave
_______________________________
David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
_______________________________
Any opinions or recommendations
herein are those of the author
and not of his employer.





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