=A0hay that is concise and explicit many thanks =
=A0now i am reading docs about //inflections.rb=A0
i grasp your ste= ps under the heading

"String inflections define new methods o= n the String class"
where '../inflections.rb' has fifteen methods
your solution sho= ws some neat ways it can be adapted
in our case both numbers and strings= are in singular and plural
thankfully the output grammar can be correc= ted to suit either alternative

this was a hitch that is solved in ruby
it appears quite a fiddly= issue more than it really is

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 11:10 AM, Hassan Schroede= r <hassan.schroeder@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 3:4= 0 PM, Timothy Gregory <tigre7t@gmai= l.com> wrote:
> on the side-track in case the name has only one character then the wor= d
> 'character' is usually written as character(s) rather than as = an apostrophe
> this visible abbreviation is a valid way to create two options.
> to write it this way will (s) need to be escaped?
> for singular and plural to be viable alternatives?
> can (s) be escaped by either "\(s)" or " " ?
> puts needs singular and plural pronouns and tense
> to print 'there is one ,,' or else put 'there are..'

In a pry console, including one Rails file:

1.9.3 (main):0 > require 'active_support/core_ext/string/inflections= '
=3D> true
1.9.3 (main):0 > count =3D 1
=3D> 1
1.9.3 (main):0 > "there #{'is'.pluralize(count)} #{count} #{'character'.pluralize(count)}."
=3D> "there is 1 character."
1.9.3 (main):0 > count =3D 3
=3D> 3
1.9.3 (main):0 > "there #{'is'.pluralize(count)} #{count} #{'character'.pluralize(count)}."
=3D> "there is 3 characters."

!! oops, that's a surprising omission, but

1.9.3 (main):0 > ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections{|inflect|
inflect.plural "is", "are" }
....
1.9.3 (main):0 > "there #{'is'.pluralize(count)} #{count} #{'character'.pluralize(count)}."
=3D> "there are 3 characters."

HTH,

--
Hassan Schroeder ------------------------ hassan.schroeder@gmail.com
http://about.= me/hassanschroeder
twitter: @hassan