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GNU Units is a cross-platform computer program for conversion of units of quantities. It has a database of measurement units , including esoteric and historical units. This for instance allows conversion of velocities specified in furlongs per fortnight , and pressures specified in tons per acre .
Conversion of units is the conversion of the unit of measurement in which a quantity is expressed, typically through a multiplicative conversion factor that changes the unit without changing the quantity. This is also often loosely taken to include replacement of a quantity with a corresponding quantity that describes the same physical property.
An input unit can be converted to any number of output units—the outputs are specified as a "combination" by separating unit codes with a space (" ") or a plus ("+"). Using a space as a separator does not work if any of the unit codes contains a space.
By default, the output value is rounded to adjust its precision to match that of the input. An input such as 1234 is interpreted as 1234 ± 0.5, while 1200 is interpreted as 1200 ± 50, and the output value is displayed accordingly, taking into account the scale factor used in the conversion.
Conversions between units in the metric system are defined by their prefixes (for example, 1 kilogram = 1000 grams, 1 milligram = 0.001 grams) and are thus not listed in this article. Exceptions are made if the unit is commonly known by another name (for example, 1 micron = 10 −6 metre).
Module:Convert – (this module) code to convert units; Module:Convert/data – unit definitions; Module:Convert/text – text messages, and parameter names and values; The following modules are optional and are used only if required and if the module exists:
The alttype field allows conversion between units of different type, provided each unit is whitelisted to allow the conversion. As at December 2013, the following energy units have alttype = "torque" (the first line consists of different units, while the second line consists of aliases for units in the first line):
Such a program may be used to convert a file format. If the source format or target format is not recognized, then at times a third program may be available which permits the conversion to an intermediate format, which can then be reformatted using the first program. There are many possible scenarios.