Java library to "spell out" numbers in localized fashion

Question

I'm looking for a java library that would be able to format numbers as words for specified locale, (e.g. 17 = seventeen, 1023 = one thousand twenty three for en_US).

I need this to work with monetary amounts, so decimal fractions need to be supported. The only thing I found on Google was ICU project, particularly this class. It looks somewhat iffy (I haven't actually tried it yet, judging solely by the doc). Did anybody use it? Is there something better out there?

Answer 1

Why not write your own?

As far as programming projects go, this is not really all that hard.

And as for localizing, don't worry so much. Most languages use more or less the same sort of system to express numbers as words. The only things you are likely to have trouble with are minor differences such as:

• Word order: Is 24 "twenty-four" or "four-and-twenty"? Easy enough to switch around one line of code to handle both of these.
• Irregular numbers, such as 11 through 19 in English, 11 through 29 in Spanish, and so on. You might be able to use a lookup table to handle these exceptions, and a regular method for the rest.
• Millions and billions: some languages use millions and billions like English, but some instead use groupings of 10,000 or 100,000 or some other number. I would handle these using another lookup table.

If you can do this in English, it will not be hard to change the code to pretty much any language.

Answer 2

I imagine digging around the source code of http://www.jonelo.de/java/nc/index.html might turn up something that does what you are after. It must have similar functionality in it to do what it does.