Re: beginner’s question with Maxi ma

On Tue, Aug 25, 2026 at 11:15 PM <[email protected]> wrote:

> Could the ezunits database be extended somehow to separate (most) SI prefixes from SI units, and combine them as needed? For example, having “kilo-” and “k-” prefixes with a value of 1000, so that “kilometer” would be parsed as a combination of “kilo-” and “meter”, and “km” as a combination of “k-” and “m”, rather than requiring separate database entries for every combination of SI prefix and SI unit?

I have thought about that sometimes. The advantage that I see is that
it would make it more succinct to declare SI units, since it would
obviate the need for stuff like 100 cm = 1 meter and so on. But it
wouldn't make it any simpler to work with units, I don't think -- it's
not any more convenient to write milli*second than millisecond, and
m*s is ambiguous, because m might be milli and it might be meter.

Maybe it would be possible to automate the standard SI prefixes, so
that at least the declarations for SI units would be a lot more
concise. But most of the time, most users won't want to look at that
stuff, so it's not a big win.

If you have some other ideas about it, I would be interested to hear.

best,

Robert


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