MSc (Conversion) Individual Project Proposal 1993
 
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 Proposer:  Iain Stewart,   room 348,  ext 4982
 
 Title: A Language With Units and Dimensions
 
 
 Outline:  In a language where numerical calculations are done, the 
real-life quantities very often have dimensions (eg, length, acceleration, 
viscosity) and units in these dimensions (say metres of length, 
foot-poundals of energy, or whatever). But in the machine, they are usually 
all just stored as REAL. This puts a large burden of consistency checking 
on users of the language. For example, you could accidentally add metres to 
kilograms, which is simply wrong. Or you could add metres to feet, which is 
meaningful but will give the wrong answer (because you should have 
remembered to convert one to the other!). Since everything is just type 
REAL, the machine will not complain.
 
   So the idea of the project is to design and implement a language with 
units and dimensions as part of the type-structure---so that never again do 
people make these errors! Since as far as I know this has never been done 
before, the project should be taken as a "concept study", and it will be 
quite enough to implement a very cut-down language, perhaps with just a 
main program and no procedures, or a very simple functional interpreter if 
you prefer functional languages. The main point is to see if a nice, 
natural syntax and semantics for units and dimensions is feasible.