Units (command)
- The correct title of this article is units. The initial letter is capitalized due to technical restrictions.
units is a command line unit conversion program.
The units program converts quantities expressed in various scales to their equivalents in other scales. The units program can handle multiplicative scale changes as well as nonlinear conversions such as Fahrenheit to Celsius.
The units are defined in an external data file (usually found in /usr/share/units.dat on SuSE), in plain text format, and it is in fact a good source of information in itself. You can use the extensive data file that comes with this program, or you can provide your own data file to suit your needs.
You can use the program interactively with prompts, or you can use it from the command line.
It has a huge database of units, including esoteric and historical units. This for instance allows you to convert velocities specified in furlongs per fortnight, if you really wish.
units has been a standard part of Unix since the early Bell Laboratories versions.
The GNU free software version is written by Adrian Mariano
