units - a brief review
Summary
Units provides general conversion between values in different units [ surprisingly enough ].
Why would I want to use this?
Communicating across the Atlantic is a common occurence, but I'm too young to understand imperial units! Units quickly solves those problems, and several others. Recipes, old drawings and circuit timing problems to name a few. I also sometimes find it faster for doing timing calculations for working out when jobs will finish, being as mayan units don't play nice in base 10.
Google has recently gained the ability to convert many units [ possibly units backed? ] but sometimes, the command line is best. Nice integration with IM clients mean you won't be left behind by people who still work in 'wet quarts'.
Example syntax
Units is pretty darned simple to use, although you can sometimes have to try fairly hard to get precisely the unit name it has in it's database.
sj310@laptop:~/tmp/www/tools$ units
2438 units, 71 prefixes, 32 nonlinear units
You have: 1900000 seconds
You want: hours
* 527.77778
/ 0.0018947368
You have: 12 dozen
You want: 1
* 144
/ 0.0069444444
You have: G
You want:
Definition: 6.673e-11 N m^2 / kg^2 = 6.673e-11 m^3 / kg s^2
