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 translation in a message catalog.

       The msgid argument identifies the message to be translated. By convention, it is the  Eng‐
       lish  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 func‐
       tions, 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 func‐
       tion.

       The message catalog  used  by  the  functions  is  at  the  pathname  dirname/locale/cate‐
       gory/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  with‐
       out 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  pre‐
       dating 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 0.19.3                           May 2001                                  GETTEXT(3)