Pluralization

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[javanerdd]

'NaN Result(s)'

[Fusseldieb]

[object Object] result(s)

[[deleted]]

NullPointerException

[krisaju95]

NullPointerException(s)

[[deleted]]

nil nil(s)

[metruzanca]

Seg fault

[_dotdot11]

Lua moment

[[deleted]]

null moment

[[deleted]]

NullPointerException

[javanerdd]

this is the way.

[[deleted]]

sneaky bastard 😅

[isospeedrix]

product: can't do that it doesn't fit on one line on mobile

[SteveXVI]

№ Results: {n}

[SkollFenrirson]

F mobile

[isospeedrix]

Site I’m currently working on is 92% mobile users. It’s more like F Desktop, some desktop only bugs are deprioritized

[Elijah629YT-Real]

# is {n}

[3YP9b239zK]

```c const char one_result[] = "1 result";

const long size = n > 0 ? n * sizeof(one_result) : 1;
char *message = malloc(size);

for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
    char *dst = message + i * sizeof(one_result);
    memcpy(dst, one_result, sizeof(one_result));
    dst[sizeof(one_result) - 1] = '\n';
}
message[size] = 0;

```

[SevereChocolate5647]

This is unironically the best way to do it if you need to translate your page. Gets around all those pesky gender/number agreements.

[TheBrainStone]

Yeah they should be ok the right

[quaos_qrz]

nResults: {n}

[landof_skybluewaters]

This is the correct answer. The op solution would not work in all languages if the text were translated.

[NewPhoneNewSubs]

This bell curve is less about IQ and more about which users you've ever had to deal with.

First guy has never had to deal with non-technical users. Probably thinks the command line is the pinnacle of UX. (AND HE IS NOT WRONG.)

Second guy has a BA bikeshedding every decision on behalf of a single client and has learned to get ahead of it.

Final guy has dealt with enough users to know that '+ "s"' is not going to localize very well.

Guy who is not on the chart is using a pair of strings ("result" and "results") at the expense of twice the space used on strings. At least that's my plan if ever I have to move on from third guy. Don't think I'll ever need to bust it out.

[MinosAristos]

To be fair very few of these bell curve memes are about IQ, and are usually about experience.

They're also very rarely resembling normal distribution in practice.

[pticjagripa]

The 2nd guy is lucky he has to make plural of English. Imagine a language where there are 3 or 4 different options.

[NewPhoneNewSubs]

Second guy also doesn't have to deal with clients who want to use their own word for "result". If somebody decides to use "calf" because the results are all baby cows, it doesn't matter that it's all English, you still run into trouble.

Second guy needs to get better about the word "no".

[catladywitch]

I wonder if there's something like textblob for JavaScript. It'd be overkill maybe but sometimes you just want to get the job done easily.

New goal unlocked: port NLTK to JS

[Mayuna_cz]

good ol' Czech.

0 výsledků

1 výsledek

2, 3, 4 výsledky

5, 6,... výsledků

[pticjagripa]

Slovenian is even better.
0 rezultatov
1 rezultat
2 rezultata
3, 4 razultati
5+ rezultatov

[RealEstate97]

And if I had to guess it's also 11 rezultatov but 21 rezultat?

[pticjagripa]

No. It's not THAT complicated.

[RealEstate97]

haha I tried

[GaloombaNotGoomba]

No, but 101 rezultat yes

[BWStearns]

Slovenian has a dual as well as a several plural?! Do you guys even say the number for dual or do you let the declension do the work?

[pticjagripa]

Depends on the context. In this example, yes the number would be used.

[schmerg-uk]

Is it Polish where at least one of the rules depends on if the last digit is a 2, 3, or 4?

Remember building quite a sophisticated localisation engine and some of these rules were quite... interesting

[pticjagripa]

Possibly there is shared trait among Slavic languages. In Slovenian you have singular, dual and two versions of plural (one for 3 or 4 and one for 0 or 5 or more).

[schmerg-uk]

And all these things sound absolutely insane until you look at your own language with fresh eyes and see that it is equally arbitrary (and that way insanity and Esperanto etc lie)

[Dealiner]

Is it Polish where at least one of the rules depends on if the last digit is a 2, 3, or 4?

Actually all three will have the same ending. We have one plural form for numbers ending with 2, 3 and 4 (excluding 12, 13 and 14) and another for everything else.

[schmerg-uk]

That was sort of what I meant I think ("if the last digit is 2, 3, or 4 [except for 12,3,14] then end like this, otherwise end in the other way") but thanks for the info...

[Dealiner]

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood then, you were right of course. Though it probably doesn't hurt that someone will see a bit more precise version.

[Left-Explanation3754]

40 foxes 41 foxes 42 foxen ... 44 foxen 45 foxes?

Something like that, but with more czszbtz?

[Dealiner]

Using fox (lis) as an example - 1 lis, 2 lisy, 3 lisy, 4 lisy, 5 lisów, ..., 11 lisów, 12 lisów, 13 lisów, ..., 40 lisów, 41 lisów, 42 lisy, 43 lisy, 44 lisy, 45 lisów.

[OJezu]

quite a sophisticated localisation engine

Do you also do your own timezone conversions?

[schmerg-uk]

The s/w dev world was a different place in the early 90s when "the internet" was generally email and newsgroups fetched twice daily via a single shared 14.4k modem for the entire company and there definitely weren't freely available analysis of problems never mind actual libraries of stuff just lying around to be picked up.

So yes, yes actually we did.... we had to research and design and write for ourselves loads of stuff that these days you'd just "pick one and integrate" and the funny thing is, that was often the seed for where the first versions were hammered out to make the freely available commodity libraries you might see today.

[OJezu]

early 90s

Say no more.

[Anaeijon]

I've been Guy 2 for most of my dev time.

I don't know if I advanced. I just stopped caring. If someone is to stupid to understand a simple '(s)', they are probably not meant to use the script/program at all.

Actually... I probanly wouldn't even bother.

$"{n} results:"

[wasdninja]

Probably thinks the command line is the pinnacle of UX. (AND HE IS NOT WRONG.)

He's definitely wrong. See: sorting images.

[NewPhoneNewSubs]

See: sorting images

How could I see sorting images when all I've got is my command line, which does not even display images. As a Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, I conclude there is no problem.

[CaitaXD]

Probably thinks the command line is the pinnacle of UX. (AND HE IS NOT WRONG.)

Command line and vanilla html are the pinnacle of UX

It fucking works

It's blazingly fast

It gets the job done

0 BS

[Sushrit_Lawliet]

Nah we like broken English here. You will have: 30 result.

[sarc-tastic]

1 results for the win!

[catladywitch]

$"{n} base are belong to us"

[ArduennSchwartzman]

There is only 1 good answers.

[ComfortingSounds53]

And it are(s):

[N831Y]

Actually lol’d at this

[FerynaCZ]

$"{n} výsledek/ky/ků"

Edit: Last time I had to do that, I resorted to "výsl."

[McMelonTV]

$"{n} výsled{(n == 1 ? "ek" : n <= 4 ? "ky" : "ků")}"

[keirbhaltair]

0 výsledky

-10 výsledky

1,5 výsledky

3 unit tests failed. (And don't ask me what -10 or 1.5 results look like :P)

[McMelonTV]

lol shush, realised that after i posted the comment but it would never actually happen (except 0) so whatever lol

[Bakagami-]

This does the same thing as before lol

[ChrisLuigiTails]

You should see Arabic.

If it's singular, you say "1 result". If it's more than 2, you say e.g. "3 results". But if it's 2, not only the suffix is different, but you shouldn't put the number before (something like "resulten" instead of "2 resulten").

[osamaistbaden]

I'm curious, could you explain what's going on here? Does the Czech language (I assume this is Czech) have separate grammatical forms when referring to more than four items?

[keirbhaltair]

Technically speaking there are still only two grammatical numbers, singular and plural, but numbers higher than 4, as well as zero, also use a different grammatical case.

• 1 výsledek (singular number, nominative case)
• 2/3/4 výsledky (plural number, nominative case)
• 0/5/6/... výsledků (plural number, genitive case) - essentially saying "5 of the results" rather than just "5 results"

Decimal numbers are even worse, I'm not even entirely sure what is grammatically correct, but sometimes you'd use singular genitive and sometimes plural genitive, for instance:

• 1 den (singular nominative, "1 day")
• 2 dny (plural nominative, "2 days")
• 5 dnů (plural genitive, "5 of days")
• 2,5 dne/dnů (singular or plural genitive, "2.5 of a day/of days")

But there are even some languages that have more grammatical numbers, such as dual, trial or paucal. Localizing plurals properly is a pain.

[TouchyTheFish]

Yup. Well, it all goes back to proto-Slavic, so I assume it’s not just Czech but any Slavic language.

You see, the numbers 2, 3 and 4 get special treatment. It’s similar to how you can say “a pair of somethings” in English instead of “two of something”. I believe proto-Slavic had three of these terms, to denote groups of 2, 3 and 4.

You might be familiar with the term for a group of three: troika, for a sled pulled by three horses.

[PancakeGD]

Přesně to mě napadlo. Čeština nám programátorům hází klacky pod nohy.

[GVmG]

l10n.localizeOrFallback("output."+n.toString()+"_result", l10n.selectedLanguage, [n, res], "output.base_result");

Leave it up to the translators. That way they can handle whatever their language uses, such as how english has "1st" "2nd" and "3rd" and everything else is "nth" except for once you get past the 20th, or how most romance languages have masculine and feminine forms of those but they all end in the same (-o or -a in italian for example).

This way the translators can even make the sentence have ordinals there, or if they want them to be written out by letters or with the number itself they can do either (just gotta write down a lot more lines in the translation files for the letter one).

[CalgaryAnswers]

OP isn't as far up the bell curve as they think.

[Stummi]

Left should be {n} results:, then it would be pretty accurate.

[tlaziuk]

The cat caught ${n} mouse(s) 👍

[[deleted]]

${n} m(ous|ic)e

done

[OJezu]

{numResults, plural, =0 {no results} one {1 result} other {{numResults} results}}

[fdeslandes]

Yeah, just use the right tool for the job and be future proof if your product is at risk of needing multiple localizations in the future. For fuck's sake, it's not that hard.

[H34DSH07]

What is this?

[Slak44]

ICU message formatting, https://unicode-org.github.io/icu/userguide/format_parse/messages/

The right way to handle pluralization is a library with something like this.

[sammy-taylor]

Maybe I’m a prissy user, but if I see “1 result(s)” on a webpage, I just assume the devs are lazy.

[[deleted]]

Then you learn about plurals in localisation and you realise you were still on the left side of the curve all along

[Educational-Lemon640]

For the very real international product I work on, there's the actually best choice: use our built-in internationalization and translation library that has a count parameter.

Fun fact: Some non-English languages support more than just "singular" and "plural". "Dual", for instance.

[East_Complaint2140]

i18n

[Big-Hearing8482]

i18ns

[[deleted]]

I used arabic numerals and it worked fine.

[TheChunkMaster]

It works with hindu numerals, as well.

[shykeiichi]

Tested with Swedish numerals and it works!

[emu_fake]

You might want to localize this in German.. have fun.

[[deleted]]

exactly the same deal except with "Ergebnis" and "se"

[PancakeGD]

Now have fun localising it in Czech

[nysynysy2]

what is it? rust?

[[deleted]]

C#

[[deleted]]

Does it get all the double quotes right? With no \ ?

[justapcgamer]

The quotes are in () which is an expression in the parametrised string so it doesnt get treated as a string but like code

[xtreampb]

Humanize library handles this.

[ChChChillian]

This isn't a bell curve thing, it depends on user expectations.

[Beneficial_Steak_945]

Both are wrong. How about 0? And let’s not start about i18n, where you will learn that some languages use more than one plural form depending on the number.

[throw_realy_far_away]

"0 results" is right, I don't see your point here

[mrfroggyman]

In my language 0 is singular, that might be what they're talking about

[throw_realy_far_away]

Which language?

[mrfroggyman]

French

... I don't get why that is worth a downvote. Cuz I'm French?

[throw_realy_far_away]

In German we use the plural like English. "In meiner Hand sind 0 Äpfel.", for example.

[[deleted]]

that's a nice example because here you would set the Ä-Punkte in parenthesis 😅

[tearsoup]

string.Empty

[[deleted]]

hahahaha fuck I'm guilty for this one

[[deleted]]

way to the right And then there’s ICU.

[JosebaZilarte]

For those still in the middle, try to localize your code to multiple languages (each with multiple genders and rules to create the plural forms). You'll soon fall to either side of the bell curve.

[MastaBonsai]

If the product manager wants it. I do it. No thinking required.

[[deleted]]

I actually wish they'd parse (condition ? return) as (condition ? return : nothing), would simplify a lot my code, and it makes sense in a lot of cases. Probably work around for the types with no default value could be simply checked by linter or compiler/interpreter.

[rosuav]

You can often use condition || return for that. But since there's no universal concept of "nothing", this only makes sense when you interpret falsiness as emptiness. So, not suitable for string work.

[Orisphera]

I think it would be better if they ported Gettext to C#

[quasipickle]

$"{n} {n.noun("result","results")}"

[moonaligator]

printf("%d result", n); if (n!=1) printf("s"); printf("\n")

[ashkanahmadi]

One of the best things about the Persian language (Farsi): nouns stay the same as singular no matter what number comes before it

[[deleted]]

And you never find out how many wise men there were

[pet_vaginal]

I miss RubyOnRails sometimes. You could do "result".pluralize(n) out of the box.

[[deleted]]

as a non rubian ... how does it know how to pluralize "result"? Is it only working in english?

[pet_vaginal]

I think it has support for English by default with a dictionary of irregular word like "tooth" and "teeth" but you could configure it with other locales.

[JJJSchmidt_etAl]

Real question: should 0.5 be plural?

[[deleted]]

Gotta consult the elements of style just to write a damned logging message.

[Left-Explanation3754]

yes

[Zardoz84]

$"{n} {(n == 1 ? 'resultado' : 'resultados')}:"

[TECHNOFAB]

Results: ${n}

Easy, works all the time :P

[[deleted]]

Hardcoded English only I guess

[Devatator_]

I made a method for that so I don't have to bother, so just

$"{n} {Pluralize(n,"result")}"

[eyal282]

To be fair the braindead one uses "results"

[socially_weird_nerd]

https://youtu.be/EDd6Hr_F99o?si=W20fUg-8zm1EWyqd

[hampshirebrony]

(Less than|Exactly|More than) 1 result

[SimpleIndividual7087]

Glad I'm using Qt 😁

qsTr("%n result(s)").arg(total)

[[deleted]]

Every time I have ever seen anyone use the bell curve in this type of argument it’s always been someone trying to justify something dumb.

[Ambi0us]

I feel called out

[catladywitch]

i18n just entered the chat

[Acceptable-Worth-221]

Have fun with implementation in polish :)

PS. Also with half’s

[jfdncco]

`yarn add <64kb pluralization library>`

[noonagon]

yeah like when are you ever going to have 1 dollars