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From: barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Printing plural forms.
Message-ID: <1991Feb20.001242.9592@Think.COM>
Date: 20 Feb 91 00:12:42 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.104810.549@ZYX.SE> <2706@kraftbus.cs.tu-berlin.de> <6464@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk>
Sender: news@Think.COM
Organization: Thinking Machines Corporation, Cambridge MA, USA
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In article <6464@skye.cs.ed.ac.uk> nick@lfcs.ed.ac.uk writes:
>It handles nasty words like "dependencies" (what does Common Lisp come
>up with: "dependencys"?)

No, it comes up with "dependencies".  The ~P construct is replaced by a
null string or "s" depending on the value of the argument; the ~*P
construct is replaced by "y" or "ies" depending on the value.  So, one
writes:

(format t "You have ~D dependenc~*:P." n-dep)

The : modifier causes it to back up the argument list.
--
Barry Margolin, Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar@think.com
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