Better shorthand for units

[adamchalmers]

My proposal: these are all valid KCL expressions for the same value.

• Distance.Meter(1) -- fully spelled out, using normal KCL syntax.
• 1.Meter -- using "unit suffix" notation, which is syntactical sugar (aka shorthand) for the above
• 1.m -- very commonly-used units have a second, shorter unit suffix.

Thanks to @lf94 for suggesting this!

[lf94]

Why is the . (period) necessary?

I also believe having too many ways to express the same thing is just confusing.

[alteous]

Reminds me of https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/user_literal

[jtran]

More prior art:

• Units of Measure - F#
• uom - Rust crate for the same thing

[jtran]

Not sure where else to put this, but the maintainer of dimensional, the Haskell package, just posted this:

Scientific computing with confidence using typed dimensions