Implementation of physical units

1 August 1987

journal article
Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in ACM SIGPLAN Notices

Vol. 22 (8) , 45-50
https://doi.org/10.1145/35596.35601

Abstract

This paper describes an implementation of strong typing with physical units. The typing system of a commercial Pascal compiler was minimally extended to allow compile-time checking of expressions involving physical units to ensure that the familiar semantics of dimensional analysis are not violated. The key concepts and mechanisms are described, as are the differences between ordinary type checking and that for physical units.

Keywords

KEY CONCEPT
PHYSICAL UNIT
FAMILIAR SEMANTICS
COMPILE-TIME CHECKING
COMMERCIAL PASCAL COMPILER
TYPING SYSTEM
STRONG TYPING
ORDINARY TYPE CHECKING
DIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS
TYPE SYSTEM

This publication has 2 references indexed in Scilit:

Programming pascal with physical units
ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1986
Strong typing and physical units
ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1986