num2words 0.5.0

Installation

The easiest way to install num2words is to use pip:

pip install num2words

Otherwise, you can download the source package and then execute:

python setup.py install

Usage

There’s only one function to use:

>>> from num2words import num2words
>>> num2words(42)
forty-two
>>> num2words(42, ordinal=True)
forty-second
>>> num2words(42, lang='fr')
quarante-deux

Besides the numerical argument, there’s two optional arguments.

ordinal: A boolean flag indicating to return an ordinal number instead of a cardinal one.

lang: The language in which to convert the number. Supported languages are en, fr, de, es, lt and en_GB. You can supply values like fr_FR, the code will be correctly interpreted. If you supply an unsupported language, NotImplementedError is raised. Therefore, if you want to call num2words with a fallback, you can do:

try:
    return num2words(42, lang=mylang)
except NotImplementedError:
    return num2words(42, lang='en')

History

num2words is based on an old library , pynum2word created by Taro Ogawa in 2003. Unfortunately, the library stopped being maintained and the author can’t be reached. There was another developer, Marius Grigaitis, who in 2011 added Lithuanian support, but didn’t take over maintenance of the project.

I am thus basing myself on Marius Grigaitis’ improvements and re-publishing pynum2word as num2words.

Virgil Dupras, Savoir-faire Linux