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It’s great that Quantity can utilize Wolfram Alpha to interpret unit strings that it doesn’t recognize, but I need my code to work on machines that do not have Internet access.

Is there a complete list of built-in (i.e. canonical) unit strings recognized by Quantity?

Better yet, is there a programmatic way to produce such a list?

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Good question! I hope Wolfram notices this question and intends to make the Quantity capability stand alone (I often use compound units and almost always run into this issue). – David Skulsky Apr 19 at 21:25

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up vote 13 down vote accepted

This is certainly the optimal way of obtaining the list you are looking for

Quantity;QuantityUnits`Private`$UnitReplacementRules[[1, All, 1]]
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Haha, I just came here to post this! Damn you fellow spelunker! – rm -rf♦ Jan 26 at 20:03
FWIW, this seems to me the optimal way to obtain this list, which incidentally is appropriate. – Oleksandr R. Jan 27 at 0:55
@OleksandrR. I trust your judgement, editing – Rojo Jan 27 at 1:10
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Haha, nice! The Dispatch object from which this list is extracted is actually built from the downvalues of CalculateUnits`UnitCommonSymbols`KnownUnit0Q, which is the canonical arbiter of whether a unit is valid or not. But since this doesn't change after the QuantityUnits` package is loaded, recovering the list as you do here is surely the most direct approach. – Oleksandr R. Jan 27 at 1:21
That is awesome. Thanks! – SWB Jan 27 at 6:06
up vote 3 down vote

As a partial answer the documentation says:

Supported units include all those specified by NIST Special Publication 811.

This is repeated in Unit Discovery. It also states:

Unit interpretation requires internet connectivity, and can entail additional evaluation time. If speed is a concern, it is advisable to use the canonical unit specification, which can be found using InputForm.

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