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PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

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Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Python one-liner of the day

This is a function that takes an integer and returns its ordinal representation, e.g. "1st" for 1 and so on.

It's not the most readable thing, but once I saw the pieces falling into place I couldn't help myself. Repetition of the "th" literal is the only thing that bugs me. Oh well. 

ord_text = lambda n: "%d%s" % (n, "th" if 10 < n % 100 < 14 else {1:"st", 2:"nd", 3:"rd"}.get(n % 10, "th"))

Comes with a one-line test suite! 

for t in "1st 2nd 3rd 4th 11th 12th 13th 21st 22nd 23rd 111th 112th 113th".split(): assert(ord_text(int(t[:-2])) == t)

Thursday, April 24th, 2008
+
7 comments

Some related posts: The Language I Will Kind of Learn in 2008: Smalltalk • World's ugliest Django app • Django.June wrapup • Neat Python hack: infix operators • 99-byte Python quicksort • Let's play a game: BASIC vs. Ruby vs. Python vs. PHP • Figlet Captcha
• Comment from Matt Tarbit, later that day

I think you might need to add 111th, 112th and 113th to the string in your test suite.

(Can't be certain though because I get a SyntaxError when trying to run your one-liner in python 2.3.4)

• Comment from Paul, later that day

Excelllent catch, Matt, thanks! Fixed.

And yes, I should have mentioned that this is Python 2.5+ only, due to the ternary logic.

• Comment from Reggie Drake, later that day

Unfortunately, your one-liner is so desirous to be a one-liner that on my resolution it reaches way out of the central column of your layout and past the 'Atom feed' link.

• Comment from Leo Petr, later that day

Great! Now add internationalization for Russian, Swahili, and Chinese.

• Comment from Paul, later that day

I knew that was coming.

I'll need a couple more lines.

• Comment from kbob, later that day

Here's a version that eliminates the repeated "th" AND runs in both Python 2.3 and 2.5.

ord_text = lambda n: str(n) + {1: 'st', 2: 'nd', 3: 'rd'}.get(n % (10 < n % 100 < 14 or 10), 'th')

• Comment from Jason Davies, 2 days later

Nice.

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