README.Rmd

# nsprintf: Easy Internationalized Message Pluralization #

**nsprintf** provides a single function, `nsprintf()`, which makes it simple to construct internationalized message pluralizations.

This is a common problem in writing pluralized R messages that are communicated to the end-user. For example, imagine that you have code that executes an operation one or more times and you wish to communicate the number of iterations to the end-user via `message()`, `warning()`, or `error()`. You can address that in a number of ways, one of which is simply ignoring pluralization entirely:

```{r}
n <- 2; message(paste0(n, " iterations occurred"))
n <- 1; message(paste0(n, " iterations occurred"))
```

The grammatical failure is obnoxious. Another is to construct an if-else loop based on the value of `n`:

```{r}
n <- 2
if (n == 1) {
    message("One iteration occurred")
} else {
    message(paste0(n, " iterations occurred"))
}
```

This, however, is not internationalized code. No matter what language the end-user operates in, they will receive messages in English. The code itself is also verbose. The solution offered by base R, is `ngettext()`, which internationalizes the code, allowing a package developer to [write translations using gettext](https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-devel/R-admin.html#Internationalization). In this form, the code becomes:

```{r}
n <- 2
sprintf(ngettext(n, "%d iteration occurred", "%d iterations occurred"), n)
```

If message translations are available, this code will invoke a gettext translation catalog to report a locally appropriate message translation. Unfortunately, the code is verbose and requires remembering two different function names. **nsprintf** implements this as a single function:

```{r}
library("nsprintf")
n <- 2
nsprintf(n, "%d iteration occurred", "%d iterations occurred")
```


## Package Installation ##

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The package is available on [CRAN](http://cran.r-project.org/package=nsprintf) and can be installed directly in R using:

```R
install.packages("nsprintf")
```

The latest development version on GitHub can be installed using itself:

```R
if (!require("ghit")) {
    install.packages("ghit")
}
ghit::install_github("RL10N/nsprintf")
```