Construct Natural-Language Lists with Internationalization.

and

and constructs language-aware lists in R. It extends the functionality of functions like knitr::combine_words() and glue::glue_collapse() to make and-separated and or-separated lists that automatically conform to the user’s R language settings.

Installation

You can install the released version of and from CRAN with:

install.packages("and")

or the development version of and from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pkg_install("rossellhayes/and")

Usage

and() creates “and”-separated lists from vectors.

names <- c("John", "Paul", "George", "Ringo")
and(names)
#> [1] "John, Paul, George, and Ringo"

But the Oxford comma is less common in other varieties of English, what happens if I change my R language to British English?

Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "en_GB")
and(names)
#> [1] "John, Paul, George and Ringo"

What about other languages?

Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "es")
and(names)
#> [1] "John, Paul, George y Ringo"
Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "eu")
and(names)
#> [1] "John, Paul, George eta Ringo"
Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "ko")
and(names)
#> [1] "John, Paul, George 및 Ringo"

Handling the nuances

Creating a list is not as simple as putting a different word between the last two items. For example, in Spanish, the word for and changes if the next word starts with an ⟨i⟩ or ⟨y⟩:

princess_bride <- c("Vizzini", "Fezzik", "Inigo Montoya")
Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "es")
and(princess_bride)
#> [1] "Vizzini, Fezzik e Inigo Montoya"

or-separated lists

Everything and() can do or() can do better. Just use or() to create or-separated lists with all the same contextual awareness.

outcomes <- c("win", "lose", "draw")
Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "en_US")
or(outcomes)
#> [1] "win, lose, or draw"
Sys.setenv(LANGUAGE = "ja")
or(outcomes)
#> [1] "win、lose、またはdraw"

Hardcoding language

Don’t want the language of you string to depend on the user’s environment variables? You can explicitly set the language using the language argument.

and(names, language = "en_US")
#> [1] "John, Paul, George, and Ringo"
and(names, language = "en_GB")
#> [1] "John, Paul, George and Ringo"
and(names, language = "es")
#> [1] "John, Paul, George y Ringo"
and(names, language = "fr")
#> [1] "John, Paul, George et Ringo"

Languages

Fully supported languages

* The following English variants use an Oxford comma in addition to en_GB: en_AG, en_AI, en_AT, en_AU, en_BB, en_BE, en_BM, en_BS, en_BW, en_BZ, en_CA, en_CC, en_CH, en_CK, en_CM, en_CX, en_CY, en_DE, en_DG, en_DK, en_DM, en_ER, en_FI, en_FJ, en_FK, en_FM, en_GD, en_GG, en_GH, en_GI, en_GM, en_GY, en_HK, en_IE, en_IL, en_IM, en_IN, en_IO, en_JE, en_JM, en_KE, en_KI, en_KN, en_KY, en_LC, en_LR, en_LS, en_MG, en_MO, en_MS, en_MT, en_MU, en_MV, en_MW, en_MY, en_NA, en_NF, en_NG, en_NL, en_NR, en_NU, en_NZ, en_PG, en_PK, en_PN, en_PW, en_RW, en_SB, en_SC, en_SD, en_SE, en_SG, en_SH, en_SI, en_SL, en_SS, en_SX, en_SZ, en_TC, en_TK, en_TO, en_TT, en_TV, en_TZ, en_UG, en_VC, en_VG, en_VU, en_WS, en_ZA, en_ZM, and en_ZW.

Partially supported languages

Partially supported languages generally localize and() but not or().

Hex sticker image by Flavia Rossell Hayes.

Please note that and is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.