Levi Pearson wrote:
On May 5, 2006, at 4:06 PM, Shane Hathaway wrote:

It just looks like feature bloat, that's all. I don't recall ever seeing a need for this functionality (until this thread).

What I *do* see a need for, however, is something that automatically pluralizes properly, so that the system can output "finished 1 copy" instead of "finished 1 copys", "finished 1 copies", or the cop-out, "finished 1 copy(ies)". If Lisp has that functionality built in, that would impress me, even if it's English- only.


So, for your example, you'd do: (format t "Finished ~R cop~:@P" n)

Which would print either "Finished one copy." or something like "Finished two copies."

The ~:@P tells it to back up an argument (since the n was already consumed by the ~R) and print either y or ies depending on the number. ~P itself prints an s or nothing depending on the number of the argument.

Or even "Finished one thousand three hundred sixty-two copies."

Ok, now that's cool.  Thanks.

Shane

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