unitshave

Unitshave is a conceptual framework and open-source project that aims to standardize the handling of units and quantities in software systems. It provides a lightweight, language-agnostic specification for representing numeric values paired with their units, and enforces dimensional consistency across computations. The goal is to reduce errors caused by unit mismatches and to improve the interoperability of data exchanged between services, simulations, and scientific workflows.

Core concepts include a Quantity type that couples a numeric value with one or more units (for example, 5.0 meters or 12.3 seconds). A central registry defines the supported units, their relationships, and conversion rules. Arithmetic operations on quantities carry out unit-aware results, including automatic conversion when needed. Unitshave also supports formatting, serialization, and localization so quantities can be displayed consistently in logs, UIs, and data files.

Design emphasizes safety and extensibility. Some implementations compile unit information into types to catch errors at compile time, while others perform checks at runtime. The framework is designed to be language-agnostic, with bindings for major programming languages and adapters for data-interchange formats such as JSON and XML.

Applications span scientific computing, engineering, and data integration, where precise unit tracking improves correctness and auditability. Limitations include performance considerations for very large unit registries and the effort required to adopt a new unit-aware paradigm in existing codebases.

See also: dimensional analysis, Boost.Units, F# Units of Measure.