Programming Challenge Numbers to Text?

[Levi Pearson]

On May 5, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Shane Hathaway wrote:
> It just looks like feature bloat, that's all.  I don't recall ever  
> seeing a need for this functionality (until this thread).
>
> What I *do* see a need for, however, is something that  
> automatically pluralizes properly, so that the system can output  
> "finished 1 copy" instead of "finished 1 copys", "finished 1  
> copies", or the cop-out, "finished 1 copy(ies)".  If Lisp has that  
> functionality built in, that would impress me, even if it's English- 
> only.

So, for your example, you'd do: (format t "Finished ~R cop~:@P" n)

Which would print either "Finished one copy." or something like  
"Finished two copies."

The ~:@P tells it to back up an argument (since the n was already  
consumed by the ~R) and print either y or ies depending on the  
number.  ~P itself prints an s or nothing depending on the number of  
the argument.

Or even "Finished one thousand three hundred sixty-two copies."

		--Levi