"Ben Strasser" <strasser.ben@googlemail.com> wrote in message news:loom.20060829T195422-914@post.gmane.org...
Andy Little <andy <at> servocomm.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
"Ben Strasser" <strasser.ben <at> googlemail.com> wrote in message news:loom.20060829T180704-945 <at> post.gmane.org...
In more complex situations you run accross the problem that you can no longer deduce the correct unit type. This is also the reason why PQU (= Physical Quantities Units) has introduced annomymous units. However in what way does this help? None that I can think of because in both situation (meaning non printable units and annomymous units) the users has to indicate how to print the units.
FWIW, if this is a statement regarding Quan, then it is incorrect
Then please correct me. Somewhere in this same thread you said:
In the calculation:
force * distance;
The programmer might be dealing with a force acting at a moment, or the energy required to move an object. There is no way to tell from the calculation which. [...] , so the result is an anonymous quantity.
One could apply various rules [...], but as I can't apply a rule easily to the above case, I opted to apply the same rule to every case of dimensionful multiplication and division, which was to return an anonymous quantity and leave it to the programmer to decide which quantity they were dealing with.
The way I understood this is that the library isn't able to deduce what symbol corresponds to the units so the user has to make a choice.
Did I misunderstand this or did I only get the terminology wrong?
Quan provides a default output format for "anonymous quantities", but apparently these are unnecessary anyway so I really wouldnt about it, but please dont make incorrect statements regarding my library. Thankyou. regards Andy Little