[boost] A question about Units & Spirit

Subject: [boost] A question about Units & Spirit
From: John Phillips (phillips_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-06-08 15:59:23

   In the middle of the directX thread, Daniel Duffy asked a question 
that seems more suited to its own thread. I'm starting that thread and 
giving others a chance to join into the discussion by giving you the 
content of the few messages that have passed by so far.

                        John

 From Daniel ---------------------------------------------------

Hello,
This is my first mail, so I hope I have sent it to the right address  :)

I am using the Units library for Dimensional Analysis. So far it is very 
useful. Up till now I am using it in a hard-coded/compile time way as in 
a test.cpp.

My inteterst is in using Units as part of a larger run-time system so I 
need some way of making my code more flexible. Lambda library is an 
option here but I would also like to create units and quanties from 
string input as well as being able to parse these strings to units and 
then store the units in a database.

Can I use Spirit (and Serialization) for these features? Maybe the 
functionality already exist, and I have not found it.

best regrads

Daniel J. Duffy

 From Hartmut ---------------------------------------------------

Sure Spirit is your friend for all parsing and output generation needs.
What did you have in mind?

Regards Hartmut

 From Daniel ----------------------------------------------------

Hartmut,
I would like to generate well-formed units and create expressions of the 
followiong kinds:

Examples of unit expressions:
1.       2m + 15m*32s/16s = 32m.
2.       3m*7s + 2m*10s/5m = 21m + 4s -> ERROR. Can't add meters to 
seconds.

The second group looks more tricky.

Examples of simplification:
1.       (x-2)2 + 4x2 - 2^x + 1 = 5x2 - 8x + 10
2.       x2 + 7x + 10 = (x + 2)(x + 5)
3.       (a + b)(a - b) = a2 - b2
4.       sin(x)2 + cos(x)2 = 1
5.       2sin(x)cos(x) = sin(2x)

One tricky part is for example #5 where the code needs to 'know' 
trigonometry.

best regards

Daniel

 From John ----------------------------------------------------------

Daniel J. Duffy wrote:
 > Hartmut,
 > I would like to generate well-formed units and create expressions of 
the followiong kinds:
 >
 > Examples of unit expressions: 1.       2m + 15m*32s/16s = 32m. 2. 
    3m*7s + 2m*10s/5m = 21m + 4s -> ERROR. Can't add meters to seconds.

   So, you want this to happen at run time, or at compile time? At 
compile time, I think you are already set with the Units library. At run 
time, there are examples with the library that would help.

   If parsing the input is your concern, then Spirit is a good choice. 
(Spirit 2 is even better, by the way.)

   Using the two together, you could write a program where a user enters 
your example lines and gets correct responses.

 >
 > The second group looks more tricky.
 >
 > Examples of simplification: 1.       (x-2)2 + 4x2 - 2^x + 1 = 5x2 - 
8x + 10 2.       x2 + 7x + 10 = (x + 2)(x + 5) 3.       (a + b)(a - b) = 
a2 - b2 4.       sin(x)2 + cos(x)2 = 1 5.       2sin(x)cos(x) = sin(2x)
 > One tricky part is for example #5 where the code needs to 'know' 
trigonometry.

   As far as I can tell here, you are looking for a program that does 
symbolic algebra. If that is true, then I don't think boost has a 
complete solution for you.

   Writing the parser for the input with Spirit wouldn't be that bad, 
but writing the processing engine that matches patterns and does 
simplifications is not covered by any current Boost libraries. I don't 
recall seeing anyone poll for interest on this, so I don't think there 
is even a partial library in the sandbox.

   Would you want this at run time, compile time, both? I haven't tried 
to write it, but I think a pure compile time implementation would be 
prohibitively slow. For a pure run time solution, you might consider 
linking to already existing solutions, such as Maple or Mathematica.

 >
 > best regards
 >
 > Daniel
 >

             John