[Python-Dev] Adding syntax for units of measure

[Georg Brandl]

Tobias C. Rittweiler schrieb:
> Hi!
> 
> Has anyone added special syntax to allow writing numeric literals with
> physical units? So you can write 12m + 34cm, and would get 12.34m.
> 
> My question is how would you modify the BNF the most sensible way to
> allow for this? The above example is simple, but think of 42 km/h.
> 
> (For my purposes, modifying the BNF is perfectly reasonable, but if you
> can depict a good, and convenient!, way that would not result in
> modifying it, I'd like to hear it, too.)

Hi,

normally you wouldn't add units to the language itself.  When using them
programmatically, it should be no effort to use a class that represents a
quantity with unit.  This can be made as easy as making "m" an object of
that type, so that you only need to type "2*m" to get two meters.

For the interactive shell, using a wrapper that allows simplified input is
also a possibility, like IPython's "-profile physics" mode, or something like
http://bitbucket.org/birkenfeld/phsh/ which allows you to write

>>> `1 m` + `12 cm`
1.12 m

cheers,
Georg