How do I localize a string with formatting placeholders?

Question

How do I localize a string that has placeholders in it with NSLocalizedString?

For example:

[NSString stringWithFormat:@"You can afford %i at %@%li.",[kCash integerValue]/self.price, kYen,  self.price] 

How do I localize this? Do I do break up the strings into multiple localized strings? How then do I deal with varying sentence structure and grammar?

Answer 1

NSLocalizedString won't alter your placeholders, so stringWithFormat can use them as normal. In your example, using numbered placeholders is probably a good idea -

    [NSString stringWithFormat:@"You can afford %1$i at %2$@%3$li.",                               [kCash integerValue]/self.price, kYen,  self.price] 

More info here: Is there a way to specify argument position/index in NSString stringWithFormat?

Answer 2

Have the localized strings include the placeholders. That's pretty much the only proper way to do it as otherwise, as you mentioned, you couldn't take varying word order into account.

Something along these lines:

[NSString stringWithFormat:NSLocalizedString(@"Foo %i", @"Foo %i"), 123]