NGETTEXT(3)NGETTEXT(3)NAME
ngettext, dngettext, dcngettext - translate message and
choose plural form
SYNOPSIS
#include <libintl.h>
char * ngettext (const char * msgid, const char * msgid_plural,
unsigned long int n);
char * dngettext (const char * domainname,
const char * msgid, const char * msgid_plural,
unsigned long int n);
char * dcngettext (const char * domainname,
const char * msgid, const char * msgid_plural,
unsigned long int n, int category);
DESCRIPTION
The ngettext, dngettext and dcngettext functions attempt
to translate a text string into the user's native lan-
guage, by looking up the appropriate plural form of the
translation in a message catalog.
Plural forms are grammatical variants depending on the a
number. Some languages have two forms, called singular and
plural. Other languages have three forms, called singular,
dual and plural. There are also languages with four forms.
The ngettext, dngettext and dcngettext functions work like
the gettext, dgettext and dcgettext functions, respec-
tively. Additionally, they choose the appropriate plural
form, which depends on the number n and the language of
the message catalog where the translation was found.
In the "C" locale, or if none of the used catalogs contain
a translation for msgid, the ngettext, dngettext and
dcngettext functions return msgid if n == 1, or msgid_plu-
ral if n != 1.
RETURN VALUE
If a translation was found in one of the specified cata-
logs, the appropriate plural form is converted to the
locale's codeset and returned. The resulting string is
statically allocated and must not be modified or freed.
Otherwise msgid or msgid_plural is returned, as described
above.
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.
SEE ALSOgettext(3), dgettext(3), dcgettext(3)GNU gettext 0.11.5 May 2001 NGETTEXT(3)
