gettext library : i18n for c

So in another code reading note I looked into some “standard” initialzation routines of a typical GNU (coreutils) program. And a good chunk of the initialzation is regarding localization (i18n). Here are more notes on this topic.

Well I saw something like this _("text") and was like … is there a C syntax rule I don’t know?

Then realized it’s a fucking function called _() .. e.g.

#define _(Text) gettext (Text)

man 3 gettext

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 lan‐
       guage, by looking up the translation in a message catalog.