a handy function "format.cardinal", looking for a proper name..

On Thu, 19 Mar 1998 12:21:39 +0100,
Martin Maechler (MM) wrote:

"Philippe" == Philippe Lambert <phlamber@luc.ac.be> writes:

This is not a nice name (format is generic; cardinal is not a class)
for a nice function, which I would like in several places in R code
and therefore would like to become part of R (under a better name !)

format.cardinal <- function(i, sep="") paste(i,
c("st","nd","rd","th")[pmin(4,i)], sep=sep)

# Try format.cardinal(sample(1:20))

Philippe> Isn't it a problem?
MM> Oh yes, course!

format.cardinal(22)

Philippe> [1] "22th"

MM> Thank you Philippe!

MM> So, the function will become a bit more complicated.
MM> The following would be better, but is not yet the solution
MM> [and yes, I must consult an English dictionnary or such...].
                                              ^^

is probably a good idea :-)

.f
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On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, Martin Maechler wrote:>

    >> This is not a nice name (format is generic; cardinal is not a class)
    >> for a nice function, which I would like in several places in R code
    >> and therefore would like to become part of R (under a better name !)
    >> 

I would have though "ordinal" would be a better name.  Those things are
called ordinals, not cardinals.  This would also allow a language argument
to produce

ordinal(1:3,"english") 
"1st" "2nd" "3rd"
ordinal(1:3,"francais")
"1re" "2me" "3me"

and so on (we probably have people on R-devel who can supply rules
for most common languages using the Latin alphabet). 

On the other hand, aren't there GNU internationali{s,z}ation libraries
that handle this sort of thing?


Thomas Lumley
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