GETTEXT(3)             FreeBSD 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
       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
       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)

GNU gettext 0.20.1.124-32cf        May 2001                         GETTEXT(3)