What is indefinite?
The 'indefinite' npm package is used to determine the correct indefinite article ('a' or 'an') for a given word or phrase. This can be particularly useful in natural language processing, text generation, and other applications where proper grammar is important.
What are indefinite's main functionalities?
Basic Usage
This feature allows you to get the correct indefinite article for a single word. The function takes a word as input and returns the word prefixed with the correct indefinite article.
const indefinite = require('indefinite');
console.log(indefinite('apple')); // Output: 'an apple'
console.log(indefinite('banana')); // Output: 'a banana'
Handling Phrases
This feature allows you to get the correct indefinite article for a phrase. The function takes a phrase as input and returns the phrase prefixed with the correct indefinite article.
const indefinite = require('indefinite');
console.log(indefinite('hour of work')); // Output: 'an hour of work'
console.log(indefinite('unicorn in the garden')); // Output: 'a unicorn in the garden'
Custom Options
This feature allows you to customize the output, such as capitalizing the first letter of the article. The function takes a word or phrase and an options object as input and returns the word or phrase prefixed with the correct indefinite article, formatted according to the options.
const indefinite = require('indefinite');
console.log(indefinite('apple', { capitalize: true })); // Output: 'An apple'
console.log(indefinite('banana', { capitalize: true })); // Output: 'A banana'
Other packages similar to indefinite
an
The 'an' package provides similar functionality by determining whether to use 'a' or 'an' before a word. It is simpler and more lightweight compared to 'indefinite', but it may not handle complex phrases as effectively.
article
The 'article' package also determines the correct indefinite article for a given word. It is comparable to 'indefinite' in terms of functionality but may have different handling for edge cases and custom options.
indefinite
Prefix a noun with an indefinite article - a or an - based on whether it begins with a vowel.
Installation
npm install --save indefinite
Summary
It's not hard to check whether a noun begins with a vowel and decide whether to prefix with "a" or "an," but I got tired of doing it manually every time. So now there's this. Just pass in the word, and indefinite
will return the word prefixed with either "a " or "an " depending on the first letter of the word.
As of version 2.0.0, indefinite
will attempt to detect when an acronym is passed in and treat the response differently. E.g. it should be "a UFO" not "an UFO" because of how we pronounce a long U. This isn't a perfect science, so you might have false positives.
As of version 2.0.2, indefinite
will also consult a list of irregular words to determine the appropriate article. For example, it should be "an hour" not "a hour." It also attempts to do this with various forms of the words (checking for singular, plural, and even past tense, since past tense verbs can be used as adjectives, as in "an honored man"). This is not an exact science either, and the list of irregulars is not exhaustive (and probably won't ever be), but if you find a word that's not in the list that's returning the wrong thing, please open an issue so it can be corrected.
Usage
var a = require('indefinite');
console.log(a('apple'));
console.log(a('banana'));
console.log(a('UFO'));
console.log(a('hour'));
console.log(a('ukelele'));
Indefinite also accepts an options object as the second parameter. The following options are supported:
articleOnly
- Return only the article.capitalize
- Capitalize the article.caseInsensitive
- Ignore the casing of the word passed in (i.e. bypassing the acronym checking). This is useful if, for some reason, you're yelling on the internet and want to make sure "UGLY GARDEN GNOME" doesn't become "a UGLY GARDEN GNOME."numbers
- When numbers are passed in, they are prefixed with "a" except for 8, 11, 18, and higher numbers starting with 8. However, numbers like 1100 are ambiguous. Should it be "a one thousand one hundred" or "an eleven hundred"? There's not really any programmatic way to know this for sure, but if you know for sure, you can use the numbers
option to tell indefinite
how to handle these cases. The default is "formal" in which numbers are read literally (the way you'd say them if they were written out), but if you pass numbers: 'colloquial'
, the "eleven hundred"/"eighteen hundred" readings will be used.
console.log(a('apple', { articleOnly: true }));
console.log(a('banana', { articleOnly: true }));
console.log(a('apple', { capitalize: true }));
console.log(a('banana', { capitalize: true }));
console.log(a('UGLY SWEATER', { caseInsensitive: true }));
console.log(a('2'));
console.log(a('8'));
console.log(a('1892'));
console.log(a('1892', { numbers: 'colloquial' }));
Browser
Files in dist
are UMD format, and package.json
contains a browser
field pointing to dist/indefinite.js
, so you should be able to bundle this via webpack, rollup, browserify, etc. or serve it in ye olde javascript fashion and access it via window.
Contributing
Please see the contribution guidelines.