Plurality in user messages

Question

Many times, when generating messages to show to the user, the message will contain a number of something that I want to inform the customer about.

I\'ll give a

Answer 1

What about what Java has had for years: java.text.MessageFormat and ChoiceFormat? See http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/MessageFormat.html for more information.

MessageFormat form = new MessageFormat("The disk \"{1}\" contains {0}.");
form.applyPattern(
   "There {0,choice,0#are no files|1#is one file|1

In your case you want something somewhat simpler:

MessageFormat form = new MessageFormat("Are you sure you want to delete {0,choice,1#one item,1<{0,number.integer} files}?");

The advantage of this approach is that it works well with the i18n bundles, and you can provide translations properly for languages (like Japanese) that have no concept of plural or singular words.