Quantitative

Statically-checked physical units with seamless syntax

When working with physical quantities, such as lengths, masses or temperatures, it can be easy to mix up quantities with different units, especially if we represent all quantities with Doubles, which is often necessary for performance.

Quantitative represents physical quantities with a generic Quantity type, an opaque alias of Double, which statically encodes the value's units in its type parameter. This provides all the desirable homogeneity constraints when combining quantities, with the performance of Doubles, and without compromising on intuitive syntax for arithmetic operations.

Quantities can be multiplied and divided arbitrarily, with new units computed by the compiler, and checked for consistency in additions and subtractions.

Features

• statically checks that physical quantities have consistent units by making them distinct types
• Quantity values encode the (nonzero) power of each unit in their type
• all Quantitys are opaque aliases of Double, so are stored and processed efficiently
• enforces homogeneous units for all additions and subtractions
• calculates resultant units for multiplications and divisions
• unitless values are seamlessly represented by Doubles
• distinguishes between dimensions (such as length or mass) and units (such as metres or feet)
• different units of the same dimension may be combined
• convertions between different units of the same dimension
• requires no new or special syntax
• supports units which are offset from zero, such as degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit
• fully extensible: new units, dimensions and conversions can be introduced
• provides implementations of base and most derived SI units
• represents the seven SI base dimensions (length, mass, time, luminosity, amount of substance, current and temperature) as well as other distinct dimensions, such as angles

Availability

Quantitative 0.1.0 is available as a binary for Scala 3.4.0 and later, from Maven Central. To include it in an sbt build, use the coordinates:

libraryDependencies += "dev.soundness" % "quantitative-core" % "0.1.0"

Getting Started

All Quantitative terms and types are defined in the quantitative package,

import quantitative.*

and exported to the soundness package:

import soundness.*

Quantity types

Physical quantities can be represented by different Quantity types, with an appropriate parameter that encodes the value's units. We can create a quantity by multiplying an existing Double (or any numeric type) by some unit value, such as Metre or Joule, which are just Quantity values equal to 1.0 of the appropriate unit. For example:

syntax  scala
##
val distance = 58.3*Metre

The types of these values will be inferred. The value distance will get the type Quantity[Metres[1]], since its value is a number of metres (raised to the power 1).

In general, types representing units are written in the plural (for example, Metres, Feet, Candelas), with a bias for distinction when the singular name is often used in the plural; for example, the type is Kelvins even though "Kelvins" and "Kelvin" are both commonly used for plural values. Unit instances are always named in the singular.

We can compute an area value by squaring the distance,

syntax  scala
##
val area = distance*distance

which should have units of square metres (m ²). Quantitative represents this as the type, Quantity[Metres[2]]; the 2 singleton literal value represents the metres being squared. Likewise, a volume would have the parameter Metres[3].

Representation and displaying

Each quantity, regardless of its units, is represented in the JVM as a Double using an opaque type alias.

The precise types, representing units, are known statically, but are erased by runtime. Hence, all dimensionality checking takes place at compiletime, after which, operations on Quantitys will be operations on Doubles, and will achieve similar performance.

The raw Double value of a Quantity can always be obtained with Quantity#value

Due to this representation, the toString method on Quantitys is the same as Doubles toString, so the toString representations will show just the raw numerical value, without any units. In general, toString should not be used. A gossamer.Show instance is provided to produce human-readable Text values, so calling show on a Quantity will produce much better output.

Derived units

We can also define:

syntax  scala
##
val energy = Joule*28000

The type of the energy value could have been defined as Quantity[Joule[1]], but 1 J is equivalent to 1 kgâ‹…m ²â‹…s ¯ ², and it's more useful for the type to reflect a product of thes more basic units (even though we can still use the Joule value to construct it).

Metres, seconds and kilograms are all SI base units. Kilograms are a little different, since nominally, a kilogram is one thousand grams (while a gram is not an SI base unit), and this has a small implication on the way we construct such units.

Quantitative provides general syntax for metric naming conventions, allowing prefixes such as Nano or Mega to be applied to existing unit values to specify the appropriate scale to the value. Hence, a kilogram value is written, Kilo(Gram). But since the SI base unit is the kilogram, this and any other multiple of Gram, such as Micro(Gram), will use the type Kilogram, or more precisely, Kilogram[1].

Therefore, the type of energy is Quantity[Grams[1] & Metres[2] & Second[-2]], using a combination of three base units raised to different powers. They are combined into an intersection type with the & type operator, which provides the useful property that the order of the intersection is unimportant; Second[-2] & Metres[2] & Grams[1] is an identical type, much as kg m ²s ¯ ² and s ¯ ²m ²kg are identical units.

Just as we could construct an area by multiplying two lengths, we can compute a new value with appropriate units by combining, say, area and energy,

syntax  scala
##
val volume = distance*distance*distance
val energyDensity = energy/volume

and its type will be inferred with the parameter Kilogram[1] & Metres[-1] & Second[-2].

If we had instead calculated energy/area, whose units do not include metres, the type parameter would be just Kilogram[1] & Second[-2]; the redundant Metres[0] would be automatically removed from the conjunction.

We can go further. For example, the "SUVAT" equations of motion can be safely implemented as methods, and their dimensionality will be checked at compiletime. For example, the equation,

<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mi>s</mi><mo>=</mo><mi>u</mi><mi>t</mi><mo>+</mo><mfrac><mn>1</mn><mn>2</mn></mfrac><mi>a</mi><msup><mi>t</mi><mn>2</mn></msup></math>

calculating a distance (s) from an initial velocity (u), acceleration (a) and time (t) can be implemented using Quantitative Quantitys with,

syntax  scala
##
type Velocity = Quantity[Metres[1] & Seconds[-1]]
type Time = Quantity[Seconds[1]]
type Acceleration = Quantity[Metres[1] & Seconds[-2]]
type Distance = Quantity[Metres[1]]

def s(u: Velocity, t: Time, a: Acceleration): Distance =
  u*t + 0.5*a*t*t

or more verbosely,

syntax  scala
##
def distance
    (velocity0: Quantity[Metres[1] & Seconds[-1]],
     time: Quantity[Seconds[1]],
     acceleration: Quantity[Metres[1] & Seconds[-2]])
        : Quantity[Metres[1]] =

  velocity0*time + 0.5*acceleration*time*time

While the method arguments have more complex types, the expression, u*t + 0.5*a*t*t, is checked for dimensional consistency. If we had written t + 0.5*a*t*t or u*t + 0.5*a*a*t instead, these would have produced errors at compiletime.

Combining mixed units

Kilograms, metres and seconds are units of in the mass, length and time dimensions, which are never interchangeable. Yet we sometimes need to work with different units of the same dimension, such as feet, metres, yards and miles as different (but interchangeable) units of length; or kilograms and pounds, as units of mass.

Each type representing units, such as Metres or Kilograms, must be a subtype of the Units type, which is parameterized with its power (with a singleton literal integer) and a dimension, i.e. another type representing the nature of the measurement. For Metres the dimension is Length; for Kilograms it is Mass; Candela's is Luminosity.

Metres[PowerType] is a subtype of Units[PowerType, Length], where PowerType must be a singleton integer type. More specifically, Metres[1] would be a subtype of Units[1, Length].

Note that there are no special dimensions for compound units, like energy, since the time, length and mass components of the units of an energy quantity will be associated with the Second, Metres and Kilogram types respectively.

Encoding the dimension in the type makes it possible to freely mix different units of the same dimension.

It is possible to create new length or mass units, such as Inch or Pound, which share the Length or Mass dimensions. This allows them to be considered equivalent in some calculations, if a conversion coefficient is available.

Quantitative defines a variety of imperial measurements, and will automatically convert units of the same dimension to the same units in multiplications and divisions. For example,

syntax  scala
##
val width = 0.3*Metre
val height = 5*Inch
val area2 = width*height

will infer the type Quantity[Metres[2]] for area.

However, the conversion of one of the units from inches to metres was necessary only to avoid a mixture of Inches and Metres in the resultant type, but the expression, height*height would produce a value with the units, Inches[2], performing no unnecessary conversions.

Conversions

Addition & subtraction

Addition and subtraction are possible between quantities which share the same dimension.

We can safely add an inch and a metre,

syntax  scala
##
val length = 1*Inch + 1*Metre

but we can't subtract a second from a litre:

syntax  scala
error  Lit..ond
  caption  This will not compile because litres and seconds are incompatible
##
val nonsense = Litre - Second

For the addition and subtraction of values with mixed units, the question arises of which units the result should take. Quantitative will use the principal unit for the dimension, which is determined by the presence of a unique contextual PrincipalUnit instance, parameterized on Dimension and Units types.

In general, if the units for the same dimension don't match between the operands, then the principal unit will be used for both. This may mean that adding a foot to a mile produces a result measured in metres, but a new PrincipalUnit[Length, Miles[1]]() contextual value could always be provided in-scope, which will take precedence over the PrincipalUnit[Length, Metres[1]] in scope.

Some additional contextual values may be required, though. See below for more information on conversions.

Inequality Comparisons

Likewise, we can compare units in like or mixed values with the four standard inequality operators (<, >, <=, >=). These will return true or false if the operands have the same dimension, even if they have different units, for example,

syntax  scala
highlight  8..Metre  This returns true.
##
8*Foot < 4*Metre

while incompatible units will result in a compile error.

Equality

Equality between different Quantity values should be treated with care, since all such values are represented as Doubles at runtime, and the JVM's standard equality will not take units into account. So, by default, 3*Foot == 3*Metre will yield true, since 3.0 == 3.0!

This is highly undesirable, but luckily there's a solution:

syntax  scala
##
import language.strictEquality

This turns on Scala's strict-equality feature, which forbids comparisons between any two types unless a corresponding CanEqual[LeftOperandType, RightOperandType] exists in scope for the appropriate operand types. Quantitative provides just such an instance for Quantity instances with the same units.

The runtime equality check, however, is performed in exactly the same way: by comparing two Doubles. That is absolutely fine if we know the units are identical, but it does not allow equality comparisons between Quantitys of the same dimension and different units.

For this, there are two possibilities:

• convert one of the Quantitys to the units of the other
• test left <= right && left >= right, which will only be true if left equals right

Conversion ratios

In order to automatically convert between two units, Quantitative needs to know the ratio between them. This is provided with a contextual Ratio value for the appropriate pair of units: one with the power 1 and the other with the power -1. The rate of conversion should be specified as a singleton literal Double as the second parameter. The given may be erased, if using Scala's erased definitions.

For example,

syntax     scala
highlight  erased  We can make the value erased.
##
erased given Ratio[Kilograms[1] & Tons[-1], 1016.0469088] = ###

which specifies that there are about 1016 kilograms in a ton, and will be used if Quantitative ever needs to convert between kilograms and tons.

By making the conversion rate a type (a singleton literal, specifically), its value is available at compiletime, even while the given is erased. This has the further advantage that any calculations on Quantitys which need to use the conversion ratio in a calculation involving other constants will use constant folding to automatically perform arithmetic operations on constants at compiletime, saving the performance cost of doing these at runtime.

Explicit Conversions

To convert a quantity to different units, we can use the in method, passing it an unapplied units type constructor, such as Hour or Furlong. The significance of the type being "unapplied" is that a units type constructor is typically applied to an integer singleton type, such as Metres[2] representing square metres. Each dimension in a quantity must have the same units, no matter what its power, so it doesn't make sense to specify that power when converting.

So, (10*Metre).in[Yards], would create a value representing approximately 10.94 yards, while, (3*Foot * 1*Metre * 0.4*Centi(Metre)).in[Inches], would calculate a volume in cubic inches.

If a quantity includes units in multiple dimensions, these can be converted in steps, for example,

syntax  scala
highlight  Mi..es  First convert into miles per second...
highlight  Ho..rs  ...and then convert the seconds into hours.
##
val distance2 = 100*Metre
val time = 9.8*Second
val speed = distance2/time
val mph = speed.in[Miles].in[Hours]

SI definitions

There are seven SI base dimensions, with corresponding units, which are defined by Quantitative:

• Length with units type, Metres, and unit value, Metre
• Mass with units, Kilograms, and unit value, Kilogram
• Time with units, Seconds, and unit value, Second
• Current with units, Amperes, and unit value, Ampere
• Luminosity with units, Candelas, and unit value, Candela
• AmountOfSubstance with units, Moles, and unit value, Mole
• Temperature with units, Kelvins, and unit value, Kelvin

As well as these, the following SI derived unit values are defined in terms of the base units:

• Hertz, for measuring frequency, as one per second
• Newton, for measuring force, as one metre-kilogram per square second
• Pascal, for measuring pressure, as one Newton per square metre
• Joule, for measuring energy, as one Newton-metre
• Watt, for measuring power, as one Joule per second
• Coulomb, for measuring electric charge, as one second-Ampere
• Volt, for measuring electric potential, as one Watt per Ampere
• Farad, for measuring electrical capacitance, as one Coulomb per Volt
• Ohm, for measuring electrical resistance, as one Volt per Ampere
• Siemens, for measuring electrical conductance, as one Ampere per Volt
• Weber, for measuring magnetic flux, as one Volt-second
• Tesla, for measuring magnetic flux density, as one Weber per square metre
• Henry, for measuring electrical inductance, as one Weber per Ampere
• Lux, for measuring illuminance, as one Candela per square metre
• Becquerel, for measuring radioactivity, as one per second
• Gray, for measuring ionizing radiation dose, as one Joule per kilogram
• Sievert, for measuring stochastic health risk of ionizing radiation, as one Joule per kilogram
• Katal, for measuring catalytic activity, as one mole per second

Defining your own units

Quantitative provides implementations of a variety of useful (and some less useful) units from the metric system, CGS and imperial. It's also very easy to define your own units.

Imagine we wanted to implement the FLOPS unit, for measuring the floating-point performance of a CPU: floating-point instructions per second.

Trivially, we could create a value,

syntax  scala
##
val SimpleFlop = 1.0/Second

and use it in equations such as, 1000000*SimpleFlop * Minute to yield an absolute number representing the number of floating-point instructions that could (theoretically) be calculated in one minute by a one-megaFLOP CPU.

But this definition is just a value, not a unit. We can tweak the definition slightly to,

syntax  scala
##
val Flop = MetricUnit(1.0/Second)

and it becomes possible to use metric prefixes on the value. So we could rewrite the above expression as, Mega(Flop) * Minute.

Introducing new dimensions

The result is just a Double, though, which is a little unsatisfactory, since it represents something more specific: a number of instructions. To do better, we need to introduce a new Dimension, distinct from length, mass and other dimensions, and representing a CPU's performance,

syntax  scala
##
trait CpuPerformance extends Dimension

and create a Flops type corresponding to this dimension:

syntax  scala
##
import rudiments.*
trait Flops[PowerType <: Nat]
extends Units[PowerType, CpuPerformance]

val Flop: MetricUnit[Flops[1]] = MetricUnit(1)

The type parameter, PowerType, is a necessary part of this definition, and must be constrained on the Nat type defined in Rudiments, which is just an alias for Int & Singleton. If you are using Scala's erased definitions, both CpuPerformance and Flops may be made erased traits to reduce the bytecode size slightly.

With these definitions, we can now write Mega(Flop) * Minute to get a result with the dimensions "FLOPS-seconds", represented by the type, Quantity[Flops[1] & Seconds[1]].

If we want to show the FLOPS value as Text, a symbolic name is required. This can be specified with a contextual instance of UnitName[Flops[1]],

syntax  scala
##
given UnitName[Flops[1]] = () => t"FLOPS"

which will allow show to be called on a quantity involving FLOPs.

Describing physical quantities

English provides many names for physical quantities, including the familiar base dimensions of length, mass, time and so on, as well as combinations of these, such as velocity, acceleration and electrical resistance.

Definitions of names for many of these physical quantities are already defined, and will appear in error messages when a mismatch occurs.

syntax  scala
error   M..)  
  caption
      the left operand represents velocity, but the right operand represents acceleration
##
Metre/Second + Metre/(Second*Second)

It is also possible to define your own, for example, here is the definition for "force":

syntax  scala
##
erased given DimensionName[Units[1, Mass] & Units[1, Length] & Units[-2, Time], "force"] = erasedValue

The singleton type "force" is the provided name for any units corresponding to the dimensions, mass×length×time ¯ ².

Substituting simplified units

While the SI base units can be used to describe the units of most physical quantities, there often exist simpler forms of their units. For example, the Joule, J, is equal to kgâ‹…m ²â‹…s ¯ ², and is much easier to write.

By default, Quantitative will use the latter form, but it is possible to define alternative representations of units where these exist, and Quantitative will use these whenever a quantity is displayed. A contextual value can be defined, such as the following,

syntax     scala
##
import gossamer.t

given SubstituteUnits[Kilograms[1] & Metres[2] & Seconds[-2]](t"J")

and then a value such as, 2.8*Kilo(Joule) will be rendered as 2800 J instead of 2800 kgâ‹…m ²â‹…s ¯ ².

Note that this only applies if the quantity's units exactly match the type parameter of SubstituteUnits, and units such as Joule-seconds would still be displayed as kgâ‹…m ²â‹…s ¯ ¹.

Status

Quantitative is classified as maturescent. For reference, Soundness projects are categorized into one of the following five stability levels:

• embryonic: for experimental or demonstrative purposes only, without any guarantees of longevity
• fledgling: of proven utility, seeking contributions, but liable to significant redesigns
• maturescent: major design decisions broady settled, seeking probatory adoption and refinement
• dependable: production-ready, subject to controlled ongoing maintenance and enhancement; tagged as version 1.0.0 or later
• adamantine: proven, reliable and production-ready, with no further breaking changes ever anticipated

Projects at any stability level, even embryonic projects, can still be used, as long as caution is taken to avoid a mismatch between the project's stability level and the required stability and maintainability of your own project.

Quantitative is designed to be small. Its entire source code currently consists of 1386 lines of code.

Building

Quantitative will ultimately be built by Fury, when it is published. In the meantime, two possibilities are offered, however they are acknowledged to be fragile, inadequately tested, and unsuitable for anything more than experimentation. They are provided only for the necessity of providing some answer to the question, "how can I try Quantitative?".

1. Copy the sources into your own project

   Read the fury file in the repository root to understand Quantitative's build structure, dependencies and source location; the file format should be short and quite intuitive. Copy the sources into a source directory in your own project, then repeat (recursively) for each of the dependencies.

   The sources are compiled against the latest nightly release of Scala 3. There should be no problem to compile the project together with all of its dependencies in a single compilation.

2. Build with Wrath

   Wrath is a bootstrapping script for building Quantitative and other projects in the absence of a fully-featured build tool. It is designed to read the fury file in the project directory, and produce a collection of JAR files which can be added to a classpath, by compiling the project and all of its dependencies, including the Scala compiler itself.

   Download the latest version of wrath, make it executable, and add it to your path, for example by copying it to /usr/local/bin/.

   Clone this repository inside an empty directory, so that the build can safely make clones of repositories it depends on as peers of quantitative. Run wrath -F in the repository root. This will download and compile the latest version of Scala, as well as all of Quantitative's dependencies.

   If the build was successful, the compiled JAR files can be found in the .wrath/dist directory.

Contributing

Contributors to Quantitative are welcome and encouraged. New contributors may like to look for issues marked beginner.

We suggest that all contributors read the Contributing Guide to make the process of contributing to Quantitative easier.

Please do not contact project maintainers privately with questions unless there is a good reason to keep them private. While it can be tempting to repsond to such questions, private answers cannot be shared with a wider audience, and it can result in duplication of effort.

Author

Quantitative was designed and developed by Jon Pretty, and commercial support and training on all aspects of Scala 3 is available from Propensive OÜ.

Name

Something which is quantitative relates to measurements by quantity rather than quality, and is best known in the concept of "quantitative easing". Easing the measurement of quantities is exactly Quantitative's remit.

In general, Soundness project names are always chosen with some rationale, however it is usually frivolous. Each name is chosen for more for its uniqueness and intrigue than its concision or catchiness, and there is no bias towards names with positive or "nice" meanings—since many of the libraries perform some quite unpleasant tasks.

Names should be English words, though many are obscure or archaic, and it should be noted how willingly English adopts foreign words. Names are generally of Greek or Latin origin, and have often arrived in English via a romance language.

Logo

The logo shows an unlabelled diagram of the seven SI base units, as illustrated on Wikipedia.

License

Quantitative is copyright © 2025 Jon Pretty & Propensive OÜ, and is made available under the Apache 2.0 License.