What units do you use?

I was cleaning up old computer files recently and I found about a hundred unit converter functions I wrote years ago for my masters research. So I decided to post them on file exchange ( http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/35258-unit-converters), and then for completeness I started filling in the gaps, writing functions for conversions I'd previously left out. The list has grown to about 800 functions now, and I'd like to know what I'm missing. I'll be doing volume next, then power and energy/work. What others would be useful for you?

Answer 1

[Jan]

• Numerical date-number of Excel <-> numerical date-number of Matlab (different to Mac and PC-Excel!)
• Unix date number <-> Matlab date number
• Java date number <-> Matlab date number

[Chad Greene]

I don't know why I didn't think of this! I frequently have to import Excel files with their silly date formats. Every time I have to remember how to convert them.

Answer 2

[Daniel Shub]

While I know it is not what you are doing, something that handles unit multiplication would be pretty cool. For example

unitconvert('kg*m/s^2')

should return 'N'.

[Chad Greene]

I like where you're going with this. Sometimes I check my units--I simplify, cancel everything out that I can, then I get down to something like kg/(m*s^2). More than once I've been embarrassed by how it's taken me to figure out that's simply pascals. Because I think of pascals as having newtons inside them, not kilograms.