Units Conversion Toolbox

Have you ever needed to convert horse power to watts but can't remember the conversion factor? How many inches light travels in a microsecond? This toolbox is designed to make getting these answers much easier.

The "unit" statement attaches units to a variable. For example,
>> x=unit(2,'yards')

x =
1.8288 m

returns the answer in International (SI) units. If you would rather have you answer in feet it can be converted to feet by

>> convert(x,'feet')

ans =
6 feet

Variables created by the "unit" statement can operated on by these operators:

Unary plus, Unary minus, +,-,*,.*,/,\,./,.\,^,.^,',.'
and sqrt

Variables are also supported by triginometric,hyperbolic, and exponential functions and can be compared by

==, ~=, >, <, >=, and <=

Special plotting routines are available for plotting variables with units. These are:

plot, semilogx, semilogy, and loglog

The toolbox appears in the html help screens and has "GettingStarted', "User Guide", and function help screens.

Just down load the tool box to the directory of you choice and set the Matlab path to include this directory. To verify operation, type

>> unit('yards')

ans =
0.9144 m

If you get this result, you are all set!