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Article View: comp.lang.misc
Article #2841

Re: Printing plural forms.

#2841
From: David Brooks
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 1991 17:40
20 lines
1190 bytes
browns@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Stan Brown) writes:
|>      printf("%d error%s copied\n", nfiles, nfiles?"s were":" was");

Here you must assume your program is never going to be altered so as
to be usable by a non-English speaker.  Otherwise, you've given them
the job of not only finding all embedded strings and directly
translating them, but also recoding to allow for different grammatical
constructions.

Of course, if you prepared for internationalization you'd use other
techniques anyway.

|>      printf("files copied: %d\n", nfiles);

Another reason to prefer this.

-- 
David Brooks				dbrooks@osf.org
Systems Engineering, OSF		uunet!osf.org!dbrooks
"It's not easy, but it is simple."
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!think.com!paperboy!osf.org!dbrooks
From: dbrooks@osf.org (David Brooks)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Printing plural forms.
Message-ID: <19346@paperboy.OSF.ORG>
Date: 26 Feb 91 17:40:05 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.104810.549@ZYX.SE> <3331.27c23984@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
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