python-quantities-developers team mailing list archive

[John Salvatier <jsalvati@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The way the properties .units and .dimensionality currently work is ok, but
I feel as though they could be reworked so that doing common operations is
easier and more obvious (however, I am not sure exactly how to do so).

Here are some common operations:

1) check the equivalence of two sets of units

   - currently x.units == y.units works, but works through string comparison
   which seems inelegant, but maybe doesn't have any actual drawbacks

2) check the compatibility of two sets of units

   - currently x.simplified.units == y.simplified.units is the most straight
   forward way to do this, but this adds unnecessary array multiplication
   - I think it would be intuitive if x.dimensionality == y.dimensionality
   accomplished this but this would require some refactoring

3) check that quantity is dimensionless

   - currently x.dimensionality = dimensionless.dimensionality accomplishes
   this
   - it would be intuitive if x.units == dimensionless accomplished this
   (could be tricky since dimensionless is a Quantity)

I don't know if there is a way to accomplish all of these at once in an
elegant way, I am just throwing out ideas and observations.

I think that ".dimensionality" when contrasted with ".units" sounds like a
way to compare the compatibility of the units ( e.g. #2)

Thoughts?