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,πratio of circumference to diameter
cspeed of light
echarge on an electron
gacceleration of gravity
forcesame as g
moleAvogadro’s number
waterpressure head per unit height of water
auastronomical 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.