Open Source @lemmy.ml tubbadu @lemmy.kde.social 6 mo. ago

Is it possible to do calculations with GNU Octave using measuring units?

Hello! In qalc I can do calculations using measuring units like this:

> 5 W * 3 s

  (5 watts) × (3 seconds) = 15 J

I'd like to be able to do something similar also in GNU Octave. I think the symbolic library could be a place to look at, but I found nothing "already done". Do any of you know of a way to achieve this functionality?

9 comments

The Octave miscellaneous package has embedded GNU units as a function which should be helpful.
- It looks interesting, but more focused on conversions than actual operations it seems:
  
  octave:37> a.value = 100 a = scalar structure containing the fields: value = 100 unit = W octave:38> a.unit = 'W' a = scalar structure containing the fields: value = 100 unit = W octave:39> b.value = 3 b = scalar structure containing the fields: value = 3 unit = s octave:40> b.unit = 's' b = scalar structure containing the fields: value = 3 unit = s octave:41> a*b error: binary operator '*' not implemented for 'scalar struct' by 'scalar struct' operations
  
  I think I've found a solution. Matlab has implemented symunits in the symbolic toolbox and I've found the original? on Github. Hopefully it is compatible to GNU Octave.
I don't think symbolic will solve your problem at all
- With symbolic variables J, s and W, the Ws won't be converted to J automatically.
  
  automatically no, but perhaps there's a way to replace it. If there's a way to check if a variable is "divisible by another symbolic one" then it would be not so hard to implement this behavior

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