packages icon



 GETTEXT(3)                  GNU gettext 0.22.2                   GETTEXT(3)
                                  May 2001



 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
      translation in a message catalog.

      The msgid argument identifies the message to be translated. By
      convention, it is the English version of the message, with non-ASCII
      characters replaced by ASCII approximations. This choice allows the
      translators to work with message catalogs, called PO files, that
      contain both the English and the translated versions of each message,
      and can be installed using the msgfmt utility.

      A message domain is a set of translatable msgid messages. Usually,
      every 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
      textdomain 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_MESSAGES, 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 codeset 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
      configuration dependent; typically it is prefix/share/locale, where
      prefix is the installation prefix of the package. locale is the name
      of the current locale facet; the GNU implementation also tries



                                    - 1 -        Formatted:  October 4, 2024






 GETTEXT(3)                  GNU gettext 0.22.2                   GETTEXT(3)
                                  May 2001



      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
      attempt 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
      translation 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
      converted 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
      warnings 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)





















                                    - 2 -        Formatted:  October 4, 2024