HP Labs Technical Reports

A Compact Representation of Units

Hamilton, Bruce

HPL-96-61

Keyword(s): units of measurement, dimensional analysis

Abstract: Existing standards for representing physical units (feet, ohms, etc.) are human-oriented, and unsatisfactory for machine representation. We present a form which can be represented compactly in a computer, accommodates unforeseen units, requires minimal agreement among the communicating parties, reveals the relationship among units, and deals with dimensionless and logarithmic units.

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