Question

I think we’ve all run into the issue before where an app says that there are “1 minutes remaining”, or something along those lines. I think this observation is a testament to the fact that many programmers ignore this issue.

In my projects, I’ve typically done something along these lines to account for pluralizing nouns:

$Count = count($Items);
$Noun = 'minute';
if ($Count != 1)
{
    $Noun .= 's';
}

echo sprintf('There are %u %s remaining.', $Count, $Noun);

I have a couple issues with this approach:

1. It places the onus on the programmer to do this pluralization check every single time a string needs to be generated, so code can never be reused.
2. It needlessly bloats the application code and inhibits readability.
3. It is not generic. The example worked because “minutes” is the plural of “minute”. What about “sheep”, “ox”, or “fungus”?

Does anyone have any ideas for a generic, modular approach to solve this problem? I’m ok with there being more than just one answer.

Answer 1

It is common to implement a function that accepts a number and all singular and plural adjectives.

So sample invocation could be

echo 'There are ' $count . ' ' . pluralize($count, array('minute', 'minutes')) . ' remaining';

If you’ll decide to translate your application into many languages this link will help to pluralize correctly: http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/l10n/pluralforms

ps: the propisal I made will work fine with any languages in case if you pass additional 3rd parameter language that will specify which pluralization formula to use.