Plurality in user messages

Question

Many times, when generating messages to show to the user, the message will contain a number of something that I want to inform the customer about.

I\'ll give a

Answer 1

I'd go with not hardcoding the message, but providing two messages in an seperate Resource file. Like

string DELETE_SINGLE = "You have selected {0} item. Are you sure you want to delete it?";
string DELETE_MULTI = "You have selected {0} items. Are you sure you want to delete them?";

and then feeding them into String.Format like

if(noofitemsselected == 1)
    messageTemplate = MessageResources.DELETE_SINGLE;
else
    messageTemplate = MessageResources.DELETE_MULTI;

string message = String.Format(messageTemplate, noofitemsselected)

I think that this approach is easier to localize and maintain. All UI messages would be at a single locaion.