gettext

GETTEXT(3)                 Library Functions Manual                 GETTEXT(3)

NAME
       gettext, dgettext, dcgettext - translate message

SYNOPSIS
       #include <libintl.h>

       char * gettext (const char * msgid);
       char * dgettext (const char * domainname, const char * msgid);
       char * dcgettext (const char * domainname, const char * msgid,
                         int category);

DESCRIPTION
       The  gettext,  dgettext  and dcgettext functions attempt to translate a
       text string into the user's native language, by looking up the transla-
       tion in a message catalog.

       The  msgid argument identifies the message to be translated. By conven-
       tion, it is the English version of the message, with non-ASCII  charac-
       ters  replaced by ASCII approximations. This choice allows the transla-
       tors to work with message catalogs, called PO files, that contain  both
       the English and the translated versions of each message, and can be in-
       stalled using the msgfmt utility.

       A message domain is a set of translatable msgid messages. Usually,  ev-
       ery  software  package  has  its own message domain. The domain name is
       used to determine the message catalog where the translation  is  looked
       up;  it  must  be  a  non-empty string. For the gettext function, it is
       specified through a preceding textdomain call.  For  the  dgettext  and
       dcgettext  functions,  it is passed as the domainname argument; if this
       argument is NULL, the domain name specified through a preceding textdo-
       main call is used instead.

       Translation  lookup  operates in the context of the current locale. For
       the gettext and dgettext functions, the  LC_MESSAGES  locale  facet  is
       used.  It  is determined by a preceding call to the setlocale function.
       setlocale(LC_ALL,"") initializes the LC_MESSAGES locale  based  on  the
       first nonempty value of the three environment variables LC_ALL, LC_MES-
       SAGES, LANG; see setlocale(3). For the dcgettext function,  the  locale
       facet  is  determined  by the category argument, which should be one of
       the LC_xxx  constants  defined  in  the  <locale.h>  header,  excluding
       LC_ALL. In both cases, the functions also use the LC_CTYPE locale facet
       in order to convert the translated message from the translator's  code-
       set  to the current locale's codeset, unless overridden by a prior call
       to the bind_textdomain_codeset function.

       The  message  catalog  used  by  the  functions  is  at  the   pathname
       dirname/locale/category/domainname.mo.  Here  dirname  is the directory
       specified through bindtextdomain. Its default is system and  configura-
       tion  dependent;  typically  it is prefix/share/locale, where prefix is
       the installation prefix of the package. locale is the name of the  cur-
       rent  locale  facet; the GNU implementation also tries generalizations,
       such as the language name  without  the  territory  name.  category  is
       LC_MESSAGES  for  the  gettext  and dgettext functions, or the argument
       passed to the dcgettext function.

       If the LANGUAGE environment variable is set to a  nonempty  value,  and
       the  locale  is not the "C" locale, the value of LANGUAGE is assumed to
       contain a colon separated list of locale names. The functions will  at-
       tempt to look up a translation of msgid in each of the locales in turn.
       This is a GNU extension.

       In the "C" locale, or if none of the used catalogs contain  a  transla-
       tion  for  msgid,  the gettext, dgettext and dcgettext functions return
       msgid.

RETURN VALUE
       If a translation was found in one of the specified catalogs, it is con-
       verted  to  the  locale's codeset and returned. The resulting string is
       statically allocated and must not be modified or freed. Otherwise msgid
       is returned.

ERRORS
       errno is not modified.

BUGS
       The  return type ought to be const char *, but is char * to avoid warn-
       ings in C code predating ANSI C.

       When an empty string is used for msgid,  the  functions  may  return  a
       nonempty string.

SEE ALSO
       ngettext(3),  dngettext(3), dcngettext(3), setlocale(3), textdomain(3),
       bindtextdomain(3), bind_textdomain_codeset(3), msgfmt(1)

GNU gettext 0.19.8.1               May 2001                         GETTEXT(3)