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From: daw@cbnewsh.att.com (David Wolverton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Internationalization [was Re: Printing plural forms.]
Message-ID: <1991Feb26.224900.2283@cbnewsh.att.com>
Date: 26 Feb 91 22:49:00 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.104810.549@ZYX.SE> <3331.27c23984@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> <3433.27ca3674@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel, NJ
Lines: 40

In article <3433.27ca3674@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com>, browns@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (Stan Brown) writes:
> >> We all have seen and, in various degrees, been irritated by texts such
> >> as:
> >> 	1 files were copied
> >> when it should have been:
> >> 	1 file was copied
> >> 
> >> I'd like to know: when programming, how do you avoid such errors? 
>  ...
>  Which all goes to show: simpler is better.  The "files copied: %d" version
>  has been error free since the beginning--as far as I know.

As an addendum to this discussion, you might consider how these sorts
of problems occur when a program is internationalized (that is, converted
into another language) (that is, a human language other than English).
A truly "world class" (pun intended) programmer will consider such
issues during development.

As an example of the kind of problem that you can get into,
consider a printf() like this:
	printf("Your account balance on %s is %s\n", balance, date);

Assuming that you pull the 1st argument out into a #define in a header
or a text file somewhere, at least the following other issues come up:
        1. How to print the correct currency symbol?
        2. How to format values > 999?
        3. How to format the date?
        4. Whether, in a language other than English, would
	the message read more sensibly with the second and
	third printf() arguments reversed?	

The ANSI C standard library (in a hosted implementation)
addresses the first three points [Doug, no need to respond
on those points unless I've screwed something up], but not the last.
HP's prinf() family contains some extensions for this purpose.
I'm not aware of any other vendor that has attacked this issue.

Dave Wolverton
David.Wolverton@att.com
...!att!honshu!daw