[adpirz]

I've seen some pretty wild conditional string interpolation where there were like 3-4 separate phrases that each had a number of different options, something akin to `${a ? 'You' : 'we'} {b ? 'did' : 'will do' } {c ? 'thing' : 'things' }`.

When I was first onboarding to this project, I was tasked with updating a component and simply tried to find three of the words I saw in the UI, and this was before we implemented a straightforward path-based routing system. It took me far too long just to find what I was going to be working on, and that's the day I distinctly remember learning this lesson. I was pretty junior, but I'd later return to this code and threw it all away for a number of easily greppable strings.

[ctxc]

Tangential: I love it when UIs say "1 object" and "2 objects". Shows attention to detail.

As opposed to "1 objects" or "1 object(s)". A UI filled with "(s)", ughh

[gnuvince]

I like the more robotic "Objects: 1" or "Objects: 2", since it avoids the pluralization problems entirely (e.g., in French 0 is singular, but in English it's plural; some words have special when pluralized, such as child -> children or attorney general -> attorneys general). And related to this article, it's more greppable/awkable, e.g. `awk /^Objects:/ && $2 > 10`.

[ajuc]

Fun fact - I had to localize this kind of logic to my language (Polish). I realized quickly it's fucked up.

This is roughly the logic:

    function strFromNumOfObjects(n) {
      if (n === 1) {
          return "obiekt";
      }
      let last_digit = (n%10);
      let penultimate_digit = Math.trunc((n%100)/10);
      if ((penultimate_digit == 0 || penultimate_digit >= 2) && last_digit > 1 && last_digit <= 4) {
          return "obiekty";
      }
      return "obiektów";
    }

Basically pluralizing words in Polish is a fizz-buzz problem :) In other Slavic languages it should be similar BTW

[morbicer]

Yeah, Slavic languages are hard but there is an ICU standard that's somewhat usable

https://devpal.co/icu-message-editor/?data=Zarezerwowa%C5%82...

[petepete]

Moreso when it's not tripped up by "1 sheeps" or "1 diagnoses".

[nox101]

Sounds like you're going to have a bad time

https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol4_1/tpj0401-0013.html