Plural String Formatting
Check out the inflect package. It will pluralize things, as well as do a whole host of other linguistic trickery. There are too many situations to special-case these yourself!
From the docs at the link above:
import inflectp = inflect.engine()# UNCONDITIONALLY FORM THE PLURALprint("The plural of ", word, " is ", p.plural(word))# CONDITIONALLY FORM THE PLURALprint("I saw", cat_count, p.plural("cat",cat_count))
For your specific example:
{print(str(count) + " " + p.pluralize(string, count)) for string, count in data.items() }
Using custom formatter:
import stringclass PluralFormatter(string.Formatter): def get_value(self, key, args, kwargs): if isinstance(key, int): return args[key] if key in kwargs: return kwargs[key] if '(' in key and key.endswith(')'): key, rest = key.split('(', 1) value = kwargs[key] suffix = rest.rstrip(')').split(',') if len(suffix) == 1: suffix.insert(0, '') return suffix[0] if value <= 1 else suffix[1] else: raise KeyError(key)data = {'tree': 1, 'bush': 2, 'flower': 3, 'cactus': 0}formatter = PluralFormatter()fmt = "{tree} tree{tree(s)}, {bush} bush{bush(es)}, {flower} flower{flower(s)}, {cactus} cact{cactus(i,us)}"print(formatter.format(fmt, **data))
Output:
1 tree, 2 bushes, 3 flowers, 0 cacti
UPDATE
If you're using Python 3.2+ (str.format_map
was added), you can use the idea of OP (see comment) that use customized dict.
class PluralDict(dict): def __missing__(self, key): if '(' in key and key.endswith(')'): key, rest = key.split('(', 1) value = super().__getitem__(key) suffix = rest.rstrip(')').split(',') if len(suffix) == 1: suffix.insert(0, '') return suffix[0] if value <= 1 else suffix[1] raise KeyError(key)data = PluralDict({'tree': 1, 'bush': 2, 'flower': 3, 'cactus': 0})fmt = "{tree} tree{tree(s)}, {bush} bush{bush(es)}, {flower} flower{flower(s)}, {cactus} cact{cactus(i,us)}"print(fmt.format_map(data))
Output: same as above.
When you have only two forms, and just need a quick and dirty fix, try 's'[:i^1]
:
for i in range(5): print(f"{i} bottle{'s'[:i^1]} of beer.")
Output:
0 bottles of beer.1 bottle of beer.2 bottles of beer.3 bottles of beer.4 bottles of beer.
Explanation:
^
is the bitwise operator XOR (exclusive disjunction).
- When
i
is zero,i ^ 1
evaluates to1
.'s'[:1]
gives's'
. - When
i
is one,i ^ 1
evaluates to0
.'s'[:0]
gives the empty string. - When
i
is more than one,i ^ 1
evaluates to an integer greater than1
(starting with 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 8..., see https://oeis.org/A004442 for more information). Python doesn't mind and happily returns as many characters of's'
as it can, which is's'
.
My 1 cent ;)
Edit. A previous, one-character longer version of this used !=
instead of ^
.
Bonus. For 2-character plural forms (e.g., bush/bushes), use 'es'[:2*i^2]
. More generally, for an n-character plural form, replace 2
by n in the previous expression.