[boost] Dimensional Analysis Interest?

From: David Richardson (dgr24_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-10-08 14:23:11

Is there any interest in a class for compile time checking of 
dimensional correctness of arithmetic expressions?  It is a great 
debugging aid for scientific and engineering code.

I've written a library that supports exponentiation, arithmetic, 
comparisons, and user defined units on a class that enforces 
dimensional correctness via its assignment and arithmetic 
operators.  It can be used as

   Units<double>::Force        f;
   Units<double>::Mass         m(4.0);
   Units<double>::Acceleration a(3.0);

   f = m*a; //this is just fine

   f = m/a; //this will produce a compiler error.

All of the validation is done at compile-time using templates. 
Theoretically this should mean there is no runtime overhead. 
There is also a preprocessor directive to completely turn off 
dimensional validation.

There have been previous implementations of libraries like this, 
but they don't seem to be maintained anymore.  They also don't 
appear to be advertised very much, as scientists and engineers 
I've talked to weren't aware of them. (see 
http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~zdu/dim/ and the book C++ Scientific 
and Engineering C++ : An Introduction with Advanced Techniques and 
Examples).

Making something like this more widely available would be useful 
for scientific programmers using C++.  If there is any interest in 
this, I'd be willing to submit what I have for a formal review.

David Richardson