unit

A Clojure(Script) library for dealing with units and conversions.

For some background on units see here

Installation

To install, add the following to your project :dependencies:

[g7s/unit "0.1.0"]

Usage

With this library you can define, derive, convert and recognize units of measurement.

Definition

Define a unit with make-unit that has the form

(make-unit dimensions slope y-intercept prefix?)

where dimensions is either a 7-element vector or a keyword from the predefined dimensions slope is a non-zero number representing the conversion factor to the reference unit, y-intercept is a number (usually 0 except for units like Celcius etc) and prefix? a boolean that is true only when the unit accepts a prefix (defaults to false).

An example:

(ns my.ns
  (:require
   [unit.core :refer [make-unit]))


;; Taking the reference unit to be the kilogram

(def gram (make-unit :mass 1e-3 0 true)
(def pound (make-unit :mass 0.45359237))

If your unit comes with a symbol it is better to use defunit (see Recognition)

(defunit pound :lb (make-unit :mass 0.45359237))

Derivation

Deriving new units from other units is done with the functions

• mult - For multiplying units
• div - For dividing units
• exp - For exponentiating a unit
• prefix - For applying a prefix to a prefix accepting unit

An example:

(def watt-per-sq-meter-kelvin (div watt (mult (exp meter 2) kelvin)))
(def kcal-per-sq-foot-celsius-hour
  (div (prefix calorie :k)
       (mult (exp foot 2)
             (mult hour celsius))))

Conversion

Convert a number (magnitude) from a unit to another using convert which has the form

(convert magnitude unit-a unit-b)

where magnitude is the magnitude of a measurement expressed in unit-a units and unit-b is the target unit for the conversion.

An example:

(convert 12 pound gram) ;; => 5443.10844

Note that convert will throw an exception if you try to convert between incompatible units (i.e. between units with different dimensions).

Recognition

For every unit that has been defined with defunit (see Definition) and therefore has been associated with a symbol, you can use to-unit that takes a string and returns a (possibly prefixed) unit.

An example:

(to-unit "kJ") ;; The kilojoule unit

Note that this will throw if it cannot find the unit symbol or if the recognised unit does not accept a prefix and you passed a prefix or if the prefix is not supported.

Examples with exceptions

(to-unit "klb") ;; Unit does not support prefix
(to-unit "rg")  ;; Unrecognised prefix r
(to-unit "foo") ;; Unrecognised unit

Recognition ends here, this library does not try to interpret an expression involving units in any way.

License

Copyright © 2020 Gerasimos

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0.

This Source Code may also be made available under the following Secondary Licenses when the conditions for such availability set forth in the Eclipse Public License, v. 2.0 are satisfied: GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version, with the GNU Classpath Exception which is available at https://www.gnu.org/software/classpath/license.html.