android - Plural definition is ignored for zero quantity

Question

I use plurals to compile a quantity string for an Android application. I follow exactly what one can find in the tutorials:

res.getQuantityString(
    R.plurals.number_of_comments, commentsCount, commentsCount);

Here is the definition of the plurals:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<resources>
    <plurals name="number_of_comments">
        <item quantity="zero">No comments</item>
        <item quantity="one">One comment</item>
        <item quantity="other">%d comments</item>
    </plurals>
</resources>

Interesting enough, the output string is odd to what I definied:

commentsCount = 0 => "0 comments"  
commentsCount = 1 => "One comment"  
commentsCount = 2 => "2 comments"

I guess this is because the docs state When the language requires special treatment of the number 0 (as in Arabic). for zero quantity. Is there any way to force my definition?

Answer 1

According to the documentation :

The selection of which string to use is made solely based on grammatical necessity. In English, a string for zero will be ignored even if the quantity is 0, because 0 isn't grammatically different from 2, or any other number except 1 ("zero books", "one book", "two books", and so on).

If you still want to use a custom string for zero, you can load a different string when the quantity is zero :

if (commentsCount == 0)
    str = res.getString(R.string.number_of_comments_zero);
else
    str = res.getQuantityString(R.plurals.number_of_comments, commentsCount, commentsCount);