Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!lethe!yunexus!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!pilchuck!dataio!fnx!nazgul!bright
From: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Printing plural forms.
Message-ID: <273@nazgul.UUCP>
Date: 27 Feb 91 18:02:05 GMT
References: <1991Feb19.104810.549@ZYX.SE>
Reply-To: bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright)
Organization: Zortech, Seattle
Lines: 12

In article <1991Feb19.104810.549@ZYX.SE> arndt@zyx.ZYX.SE (Arndt Jonasson) 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? Are

I've never discovered any magic way, other than brute force:

	printf((n == 1) ? "%d file was copied\n" : "%d files were copied\n",n);
or:
	printf("%d file%s copied\n",n,(n == 1) ? " was" : "s were");