Re: [Boost-users] [units] Adding two absolute units

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [units] Adding two absolute units
From: Matt Calabrese (rivorus_at_[hidden])
Date: 2016-01-02 23:20:22

On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 9:25 AM, Itzik <oranja_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> So I was hoping to get the reasoning behind the exclusion of the operators
> '+' and '/' for absolute quantities. In my eyes there's not much difference
> between summing two absolute quantities of mass density and two absolute
> temperatures.

He gave the explanation. Adding two absolute quantities does not, itself,
have meaning, or at least not as an absolute quantity. If you allow that
operation directly, you're just introducing a way for users to make a
mistake that otherwise would have been correctly caught at compile time.
These are some of the kinds of errors that such a unit library aims to
prevent, so allowing the operation would go against the idea of the library.

-- 
-Matt Calabrese