4 ms·

The end of that article is a good reminder of the units command, I've been using Google for units conversion for so long that I forgot about the standalone unit

The end of that article is a good reminder of the units command, I've been using Google for units conversion for so long that I forgot about the standalone units. It even comes standard with OSX.

acidburnNSA 5y ago
I love the GNU units program so much. I think I use it at least 4 times/week. It's useful for kitchen conversions and also quick nuclear fuel burnup calcs. For example I used it on this blog post covering the long-term sustainability of nuclear fuel resources on earth. https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html#the-math https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...
- a1369209993 5y ago
  > It's useful for kitchen conversions and also quick nuclear fuel burnup calcs. Also electrical engineering and estimates of the feasibility of brute-forcing cryptographic primitives using the mass of the observable universe as fuel.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  Interesting kitchen you have. Calculating nuclear fuel burnup. I wonder what's cooking? Does it glow in the dark? ;>
  - kergonath 5y ago
    > I wonder what's cooking? Yellow cake.
dhosek 5y ago
Is there an equivalent command for doing things like 147 days from today or days since 21 jun 2021 or 88 days after 15 Aug 2021? This is the one thing I really wish was in Spotlight (I use spotlight for unit conversion and calculations which is really handy).
- mark-r 5y ago
  I use the Python datetime module for stuff like that. Excel can be useful too, since it treats dates as a number of days.
- spiffytech 5y ago
  WolframAlpha works well for those types of calculations.
- pajko 5y ago
  https://www.timeanddate.com/date/dateadded.html https://www.timeanddate.com/date/dateadded.html
- dhosek 5y ago
  To clarify, I was thinking a quick command line thing. Right now, I do it in a browser (both DuckDuckGo and Google produce the answer easily enough).
  - zadwang 5y ago
    The unix date command does this.
    - randomswede 5y ago
      Well, GNU date does, BSD date may or may not. Linux box: $ date -d 'now + 4711 days ago' Thu Nov 6 06:57:20 UTC 2008 $ date --version date (GNU coreutils) 8.30 Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by David MacKenzie. Mac: % date -d 'now + 4711 days ago' usage: date [-jnRu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t west] [-v[+|-]val[ymwdHMS]] ... [-f fmt date | [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss]] [+format] I also seem to be unable to pull a version out of the Mac's date command.
- bewuethr 5y ago
  With GNU date (but not the BSD-based macOS date, I believe), and not all that convenient for "days since": $ date -d 'today + 147 days' +%F 2022-02-23 $ echo $(( ($(date +%s) - $(date -d '2021-06-21' +%s)) / 86400 )) 100 $ date -d '2021-08-15 + 88 days' +%F 2021-11-11

The end of that article is a good reminder of the units command, I've been using Google for units conversion for so long that I forgot about the standalone units. It even comes standard with OSX.

acidburnNSA 5y ago

I love the GNU units program so much. I think I use it at least 4 times/week. It's useful for kitchen conversions and also quick nuclear fuel burnup calcs. For example I used it on this blog post covering the long-term sustainability of nuclear fuel resources on earth. https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-longterm-sustainable.html#the-math https://whatisnuclear.com/blog/2020-10-28-nuclear-energy-is-...

a1369209993 5y ago
> It's useful for kitchen conversions and also quick nuclear fuel burnup calcs. Also electrical engineering and estimates of the feasibility of brute-forcing cryptographic primitives using the mass of the observable universe as fuel.
LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
Interesting kitchen you have. Calculating nuclear fuel burnup. I wonder what's cooking? Does it glow in the dark? ;>
- kergonath 5y ago
  > I wonder what's cooking? Yellow cake.

dhosek 5y ago

Is there an equivalent command for doing things like 147 days from today or days since 21 jun 2021 or 88 days after 15 Aug 2021? This is the one thing I really wish was in Spotlight (I use spotlight for unit conversion and calculations which is really handy).

mark-r 5y ago
I use the Python datetime module for stuff like that. Excel can be useful too, since it treats dates as a number of days.
spiffytech 5y ago
WolframAlpha works well for those types of calculations.
pajko 5y ago
https://www.timeanddate.com/date/dateadded.html https://www.timeanddate.com/date/dateadded.html
dhosek 5y ago
To clarify, I was thinking a quick command line thing. Right now, I do it in a browser (both DuckDuckGo and Google produce the answer easily enough).
- zadwang 5y ago
  The unix date command does this.
  - randomswede 5y ago
    Well, GNU date does, BSD date may or may not. Linux box: $ date -d 'now + 4711 days ago' Thu Nov 6 06:57:20 UTC 2008 $ date --version date (GNU coreutils) 8.30 Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by David MacKenzie. Mac: % date -d 'now + 4711 days ago' usage: date [-jnRu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t west] [-v[+|-]val[ymwdHMS]] ... [-f fmt date | [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss]] [+format] I also seem to be unable to pull a version out of the Mac's date command.
bewuethr 5y ago
With GNU date (but not the BSD-based macOS date, I believe), and not all that convenient for "days since": $ date -d 'today + 147 days' +%F 2022-02-23 $ echo $(( ($(date +%s) - $(date -d '2021-06-21' +%s)) / 86400 )) 100 $ date -d '2021-08-15 + 88 days' +%F 2021-11-11