My biggest issue is that my recent software development experience has involved using Java much more than C++ and I'm trying to learn how to use a C++ library that makes pretty heavy use of templates. Is there a tutorial somewhere that shows examples of doing basic things with this library? The kind of things
The examples directory has simple, functional demonstrations of just about every type of functionality that anyone has wanted to date.
- What is the difference between a "measurement" and a "quantity"? Is it that the former doesn't specify a unit?
measurement is just a toy class to demonstrate that you can integrate units with non-trivial UDTs.
- Does the library provide functions for converting between different units? ... for example, converting from miles to kilometers. If not, is there a recommended way to do this?
Dimensionally consistent quantities can be converted by explicit construction or through conversion_factor. See the examples I listed earlier.
- Can I only add quantities that have the same unit or can I add ones with different units and the library will handle conversions for me?
Any dimensionally-consistent quantities may be combined, but you need to stipulate the conversion path yourself - the library specifically disables implicit conversions because these are impossible to make consistent.
- How can I extract the numeric value from a quantity?
The value() member function.
- How can I extract the unit type from a quantity?
Did you look at the documentation for class quantity? Use the unit_type typedef. I really strongly recommend you go through the example code. Just about everything is in there and is reasonably well commented. Matthias