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units -- Command Convert measurements units [ -u ] units is an interactive program that tells you how to convert one unit of measurement into another. It prompts you for two quantities with the same dimension (e.g., two measurements of weight, or two of size). It first prints the prompt ``You have:'' to ask for the unit you wish to convert from, and then prints the prompt ``You want:'' for the unit you wish to convert to. Example The following example returns the formula for convert fortnights into days: You have: fortnight You want: days * 14 / 0.071428 The following fundamental units are recognized: meter, gram, second, coulomb, radian, bit, unitedstatesdollar, sheet, candle, kelvin, and copperpiece (shillings and pence). A quantity consists of an optional number (default, 1) and a dimension (default, none). Numbers are floating point with optional sign, decimal part and exponent. Dimensions may be specified by fundamental or derived units, with optional orders. A quantity is evaluated left to right: a factor preceded by a `/' is a divisor, otherwise it is a multiplier. For example, the earth's gravitational acceleration may be entered as any of the following: 9.8e+0 m+1 sec-2 32 ft/sec/sec 32 ft/sec+2 British equivalents of US units are prefixed with br, e.g., brpint. Other units include c (speed of light), G (gravitational constant), R (gas-law constant), phi (golden ratio) % (1/100), k (1,024), and buck (United States dollar). /usr/lib/units is the ASCII file that contains conversion tables. The binary file /usr/lib/binunits may be recreated by using the -u option. Files /usr/lib/units -- Known units /usr/lib/binunits -- Binary encoding of units file See Also bc, commands, conv Diagnostics If the ASCII file /usr/lib/units has changed more recently than the binary file /usr/lib/binunits, units prints a message and regenerates the binary file before it continues; this can take up to a few minutes, depending upon the speed of your system. The error message ``conformability'' means that the quantities are not dimensionally compatible, e.g., m/sec and psi. units prints each quantity and its dimensions in fundamental units. Notes There are the inevitable name collisions: g for gram versus gee for Earth's gravitational acceleration, exp for the base of natural logarithms versus e for the charge of an electron, ms for (plural) meters versus millisecond, and, of course, batman for the Persian measure of weight rather than the Turkish.