[leuzkdqp] Units

Some notes on dimensional quantities and type systems:

Addition, subtraction, assignment, and comparison should fail if the units are incompatible.

Multiplication, division, and exponentiation by a rational dimensionless power always work.  These operations assume commutativity.

Distinguishing addition from multiplication vaguely reminds me of the difference between floating point and fixed point.

Unit conversion: a quantity can be read in one set of units then shown in another set.  Abstractly it does not exist as a real number in either.

Converting between different families of units requires exact linear algebra on rational numbers.

In some functions, units pass through just fine.  Others, e.g., trigonometric, require dimensionless numbers.

Not all dimensionless numbers are the same unit: adding an angle to the fine structure constant seems as meaningless as adding a foot to a volt.  But multiplying them could be reasonable.

One can take any compound type with a dimensionless internal type and turn it into a new compound type with that internal type having units.  But should this be considered a "new" type?  Of course, this is useless unless the internal type defined arithmetic operations: "True" miles per hour seems meaningless.

Creating such compound types is analogous to the "function" idea above by viewing a compound type as a data constructor function of a base type.  Constructors do not do operations which can fail, like addition, so the function always succeeds.

Creating a list populated by successive time derivatives of position seems like a useful thing to be able do.  But every element of the list will have different dimensions, which violates the naive idea of a list being items all of the same type.

We would like to catch all dimensionality errors at compile time, but this may not be possible.  The extreme example would be implementing the "units" program.  Is that an anomaly?

It is OK to add a vector to a coordinate (which has an origin) but not a coordinate to a coordinate.  There seems to be a concept of units and "delta" units.

It is OK to subtract coordinates to get a delta.

Maybe multiplying coordinates is also illegal.

Coordinates versus vectors, units versus delta units, seems like an orthogonal problem to "regular" units.  Separate them in software so one can use either concept independently, for example, distinguishing dimensionless from delta dimensionless.

Go further than just "delta" to distinguish first, second, etc., differences.

An X component and Y component of a vector might have the same units, say, length, but one wants to avoid adding them, as this is typically a typo.  But sometimes, for rotations, one does add them.

A Haskell Wiki page: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Physical_units. The units package seems promising.