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Abbreviating microseconds

Started by ralferoo, 13:02, 09 November 13

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ralferoo

This has been making me think for a while...

I'm curious why a large number of people on the cpcwiki commonly use ys for microseconds instead of us. I've never seen that used anywhere except here. Most datasheets and documentation use us, a few datasheets use µs. Only here have I ever seen ys used, but it's actually really common here, maybe half ys and half us.

I know it looks typographically closer to µs and I can understand that a Greek speaker might see a u and read it as Y and type y instead (especially as upsilon on a Greek keyboard is where most countries have Y on their keyboards). But actually, most of the use of ys and us here seems to come from English or German native speakers. And I'd have thought Germans would all use µs as they all have it on their keyboards anyway and most English people would use us as that's what most of the English speaking scientific community would write (as far as I'm aware).

Just to throw in more confusion, the SI abbreviations for both millisecond and microsecond are actually both ms, so both us and ys are technically wrong!  :o And ys is actually yoctoseconds (10^-24), whereas at least us isn't officially defined!

So, basically I'm just wondering if ys is actually commonly used by people outside of cpcwiki, and if so is it particular nationalities and why...

Devilmarkus

I use µs... Not right?
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gerald

I mostly use us on UK keyboard, and µs on FR keyboard

ralferoo

Quote from: Devilmarkus on 13:15, 09 November 13
I use µs... Not right?
No, that's the only genuinely correct abbreviation! But µs does seem to be far less common than us in a lot of datasheets (probably the older ones) and when people are typing it (for the internet rather for print).
Quote from: gerald on 13:37, 09 November 13
I mostly use us on UK keyboard, and µs on FR keyboard
Interesting... is that just personal preference or does the French keyboard also have altgr-m like the German keyboard which makes it easy to type? My Windows PC doesn't have it in the UK layout, but my Linux PC does! :)

fano

#4
µs seems to be the only correct abbrieviation as ys for yoctoseconds regarding normalised prefixes.us is surely used for keyboards that down own µ symbol.
For easy comparaison, call this a nop or a CRTC char as they have the same value on our CPC =)
"NOP" is the perfect program : short , fast and (known) bug free

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gerald

Quote from: ralferoo on 13:51, 09 November 13
Interesting... is that just personal preference or does the French keyboard also have altgr-m like the German keyboard which makes it easy to type? My Windows PC doesn't have it in the UK layout, but my Linux PC does! :)
µ is available as a regular key on French keyboard, so not using it is just laziness !
Then I mostly work with UK/US keyboard, using us seems a natural/good replacement. And datasheets mostly use it as well when not using µs.

gerald

Quote from: fano on 14:15, 09 November 13
us stands for nanoseconds
:o
did I read your n upside down ?

fano

Quote from: gerald on 14:26, 09 November 13
:o
did I read your n upside down ?
Surely , my bad , i've been too fast  ;D
"NOP" is the perfect program : short , fast and (known) bug free

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ralferoo

#8
Quote
For easy comparaison, call this a nop or a CRTC char as they have the same value on our CPC =)
Oh, I'd always prefer to call it 2us or 2µs as it's time that I'm measuring and its appropriate to use microseconds. I was just curious as to where the ys thing came from and whether it was cultural.

Personally, I hate labelling things as e.g. "2 NOPs" as IMHO it hinders understanding of what's actually going on. There's nothing inherently special about a NOP on the Z80 (well actually there is in that it's deliberately assigned an unused opcode point rather than just using any of the "LD r,r" that are implicitly no-op - 40, 49, 52, 5B, 64,6D, 7F). If you start thinking that instruction times are actually defined in multiples of the time for a NOP, then you will be surprised when exceptions happen. As an aside, I've also worked on CPUs where NOPs aren't necessarily the quickest instruction... ;)

fano

#9
nop is used for simplicity as reference too but obviously it is very CPC specific as ,due to the CPC hardware design, all Z80 instructions timing are multiples of 1µs.1 CPC nop is really equal to 1µs or 1 CRTC char, no doubt about this.
"nop" is very used in french scene to mean an µs.
"NOP" is the perfect program : short , fast and (known) bug free

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ralferoo

Quote from: fano on 14:52, 09 November 13
due to the CPC hardware design, all Z80 instructions timing are multiples of 1µs
But this is not true. This mistaken belief is exactly why emulators designed around such a belief have to have special cases when dealing with interrupts.

Bryce

I always type µf / µs etc but can you give us a link to a thread that used y? I've never seen it used here.

Bryce.

ralferoo

Hmmm. I've just been looking, and now the only posts I can find are TFM's, e.g. 32-character-width screen mode so it clearly isn't anywhere near as common as I thought.

But I'm sure I've seen ys used here several times and each time I've thought "Hmmm, wonder why ys not us" but now I come to look, it does seem to be either TFM or people who've quoted him.

I'm still "pretty sure" that I've seen it in other people's posts too, which is why I assumed it was a cultural thing. Obviously not and I can stop wondering about it... :)


Bryce

Glad we were able to clear that one up for you :)

Bryce.

Gryzor

Μμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμ!!!!


(surprised that French keyboards have a key with it! Vive la Grece!)

gerald

Quote from: Gryzor on 20:11, 09 November 13
Μμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμμ!!!!


(surprised that French keyboards have a key with it! Vive la Grece!)
As on every AZERTY CPCs  :P
But I am wondering when this symbol appeared as its only use is as micro symbol (no french words use it)

Bryce

German keyboards have it too: Alt-Gr + M

Bryce.

Gryzor

Behold, the power of μ. (well, in Greek it means something else entirely... ;D )

AMSDOS

#18
I feel like I'm raining on someones party here because I used to do tests on water quality and was using "µs" to represent microsiemens of the water and several websites seem reflect that, so I'm unsure if Microseconds is the same thing.  :-[ EDIT: It's looking like that those terms share the same symbol at least with this site, their using "us" to represent Microseconds

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Bryce

Just to be completely pedantic about it (I like doing that somethings :) ). ys is the official abbreviation for a yoctosecond ie: 1ys = 0.000000000000000000000001s whereas a microsecond 1µs = 0.000001s

Bryce.

Gryzor

Where on earth is it used? :D

Bryce

Quantum / Atomic Physics - Decay times and other states / transistions that don't hang about that long :)

Bryce.

Gryzor

You Scientists with your hubris, you will ultimately feel the wrath.

fano

Quote from: ralferoo on 15:14, 09 November 13
But this is not true. This mistaken belief is exactly why emulators designed around such a belief have to have special cases when dealing with interrupts.
Sure , i remember reading something about interrupts (can not remember where) but i thought that was a very specific case.Do you have an example about time shifting ? that could be interesting to see an instruction shifted with less than 1 µs.
"NOP" is the perfect program : short , fast and (known) bug free

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MaV

Quote from: Gryzor on 10:52, 11 November 13You Scientists with your hubris, you will ultimately feel the wrath.
I have no idea what you're talking about. Now excuse me, there's a storm coming, and I have to go back to the graveyard to dig up some fresh bodies to finish my newest creation.
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