[COFF] Re: A second Unix Patent

[Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk>]

Hi Phil,

Copying to the COFF list, hope that's okay.  I thought it might interest
them.

> >     $ units -1v '26^3 16 bit' 64KiB
>
> Works only for GNU units.

That's interesting, thanks.

I've access to a FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE-p6, if that version number means
something to you.  Its units groks ^ to mean power when applied to a
unit, as the fine units(1) says, but not to a number.  Whereas * works.

    $ units yd^3 ft^3
            * 27
            / 0.037037037
    $ 
    $ units 6\*7 21
            * 2
            / 0.5
    $ 
    $ units 2^4 64 
            * 0.03125
            / 32
    $ 

The last one silently treats 2^4 as 2; I'd say that's a bug.

It has Ki- and byte allowing

    $ units -t Kibyte bit
    8192

but lacks GNU's

    B   byte

Fair enough, though I think that's common enough now to be included.

FreeBSD also seems to have another bug: demanding a space between the
quantity and the unit for fundamental ‘!’ units.

    $ units m 8m
    conformability error
	    1 m
	    8
    $ units m '8 m'
	    * 0.125
	    / 8
    $

I found this when attempting the obvious

    $ units Kibyte 8bit
    conformability error
	    8192 bit
	    8
    $ units Kibyte '8 bit'
	    * 1024
	    / 0.0009765625
    $

Whilst I'm not a GNU acolyte, in this case its version of units does
seem to have had a bit more TLC.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.