User:Bluegeek

From IFWiki

Hint: Plural Names in Inform 7

Syntax is everything, and I'm finding out that ordering phrases in Inform 7 is important, too.

Suppose you have a description printing out like this:

    There are ninety-nine sheeps here.

The solution is to define the plural name of the thing so it prints correctly. The syntax for this is:

    The plural of sheep is sheep.

Or, "The plural of ox is oxen" and so forth. However, this bit of code does not work:

    A sheep is an animal.  The plural of sheep is sheep.

It still prints "sheeps". This code, however, works just fine:

    The plural of sheep is sheep.  A sheep is an animal.

By the way, this order of phrasing is in the documentation that comes with Inform 7; it's just not obvious that Inform 7 is sensitive to the order of phrasing and I was under the (mistaken) impression that phrase order was not critical in this case.

--bluegeek 15:20, 7 July 2006 (EST)