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30 Jan 2019
1st, 2nd, 3rd
Ordinal Numbers
Sometimes it is useful to write a number not as "1", "2" or "3", but as "1st", "2nd" or "3rd". These are known as Ordinal Numbers, and certainly in English (which is the only language this particular tip addresses), it's a bit odd, because we've got "th", "st", "nd" and "rd" endings, depending on the number.
The rule isn't quite as simple as it first looks, because it doesn't just depend on the final digit; the teens (and numbers ending in teens, such as 112, 213, 314) all end in "th" regardless of the final digit.
This simple function deals with these issues. The regular expressions in the case
statement deal with:
*1[0-9]
— any number ending in a 1, followed by any single digit. These are the numbers which are, or end with, a number between 10-19 inclusive. These will be ended with "th".*[04-9]
— the second part of the first case clause looks for any number ending in either 0, or the digits between 4 and 9 inclusive. These also end in "th".*1
— any other number, ending in 1. This gets "st" appended to it. 1st, 21st, 31st, and so on (but not 11st).*2
— any other number, ending in 2. This gets "nd" appended to it. 2nd, 22nd, 32nd, etc, but not 12nd.*3
— any other number, ending in 3. This gets "rd" appended to it. 3rd, 23rd, 33rd, etc, but not 13rd.
Note: The pipe (|
) between the first two expressions (*1[0-9] | *[04-9]
) mean that either of those patterns being matched will result in "th".
Click here to download this script
#!/bin/bash function ordinal () { case "$1" in *1[0-9] | *[04-9]) echo "$1"th;; *1) echo "$1"st;; *2) echo "$1"nd;; *3) echo "$1"rd;; esac } for x in `seq 1 25` 100 101 102 $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM $RANDOM do echo "$x is $(ordinal $x)" done
When you run this script, you should get this result (where the final 8 are random numbers, from the magical "$RANDOM" variable).:
1 is 1st 2 is 2nd 3 is 3rd 4 is 4th 5 is 5th 6 is 6th 7 is 7th 8 is 8th 9 is 9th 10 is 10th 11 is 11th 12 is 12th 13 is 13th 14 is 14th 15 is 15th 16 is 16th 17 is 17th 18 is 18th 19 is 19th 20 is 20th 21 is 21st 22 is 22nd 23 is 23rd 24 is 24th 25 is 25th 100 is 100th 101 is 101st 102 is 102nd 19408 is 19408th 27557 is 27557th 23093 is 23093rd 23592 is 23592nd 324 is 324th 17637 is 17637th 12400 is 12400th 10604 is 10604th
I am sure you will find lots of places where this short little function is really worth including to make the output from a script more user-friendly.
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