Locales and Ordinal values

[Alan Davey]

Hi,

Are there any methods built-in to java where I can pass in an integer value and get an ordinal value (i.e. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.) in return? I'm looking for something that will work with the current locale, much like number formats will return either a decimal or comma seperators for numbers based on the current locale.

I've searched here and on google, but so far I haven't had much luck finding what I want.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Jesper de Jong]

There is no built-in method in the standard API for this, so you would have to write something yourself, or find it somewhere else.

[Aaron Harp]

Here is a method I wrote to take an integer and return its ordinal equivalent. Hope it helps.

  static String intToOrdinal(int i) {
    String ordinal = String.valueOf(i);
    if (ordinal.endsWith("1")) 
    {
      ordinal = ordinal + "st";
    }
    else if (ordinal.endsWith("2"))
    {
      ordinal = ordinal + "nd";
    }
    else if (ordinal.endsWith("3"))
    {
      ordinal = ordinal + "rd";
    }
    else
    {
      ordinal = ordinal + "th";
    }
    return ordinal;
  }

[Aaron Harp]

It doesn't take locales into account but that wouldn't be too difficult.

[Campbell Ritchie]

. . . That is a good way to convert cardinal numbers to ordinal, but what about 11th 12th and 13th? CR

[Aaron Harp]

Oops, didn't think about that.

  static String intToOrdinal(int i) {
    String ordinal = String.valueOf(i);
    if (ordinal.endsWith("11") || ordinal.endsWith("12") || ordinal.endsWith("13")) 
      ordinal = ordinal + "th";
    else if (ordinal.endsWith("1")) 
      ordinal = ordinal + "st";
    else if (ordinal.endsWith("2"))
      ordinal = ordinal + "nd";
    else if (ordinal.endsWith("3"))
      ordinal = ordinal + "rd";
    else
      ordinal = ordinal + "th";
    return ordinal;
  }