dgettext(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 translation in a message catalog.

       The  msgid  argument  identifies  the message to be trans-
       lated. 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 speci-
       fied 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 speci-
       fied  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.  setlo-
       cale(LC_ALL,"") initializes the LC_MESSAGES  locale  based
       on the first nonempty value of the three environment vari-
       ables 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  con-
       stants 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_textdo-
       main_codeset function.

       The message catalog used by the functions is at the  path-
       name  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  installa-
       tion prefix of the package. locale is the name of the cur-
       rent locale facet; the GNU implementation also tries  gen-
       eralizations, such as the language name without the terri-
       tory name. category is LC_MESSAGES  for  the  gettext  and
       dgettext  functions,  or the argument passed to the dcget-
       text 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  dcget-
       text functions return msgid.

RETURN VALUE

       If  a  translation was found in one of the specified cata-
       logs,  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_code-
       set(3), msgfmt(1)

GNU gettext 0.16.1           May 2001                  GETTEXT(3)