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msgfmt - create a message object from a message file

msgfmt [-D dir | --directory=dir] 
 [-f | --use-fuzzy] [-g] 
 [-o output-file | --output-file=output-file] 
 [-s] [--strict] [-v] [--verbose] filename.po...

The msgfmt utility creates message object files from portable object files (filename.po), without changing the portable object files.

The .po file contains messages displayed to users by system commands or by application programs. .po files can be edited. The messages in these files can be rewritten in any language supported by the system.

The xgettext(1) command can be used to create .po files from script or programs.

msgfmt interprets data as characters according to the current setting of the LC_CTYPE locale category or according to the codeset specified in the .po file.

The following options are supported:

-D dir

--directory=dir

-f

--use-fuzzy

-g

-o output-file

--output=output-file

-s

--strict

-v

--verbose

The format of portable object files (.po files) is defined as follows. Each .po file contains one or more lines, with each line containing either a comment or a statement. Comments start the line with a pound sign (#) and end with the newline character. All comments (except special comments described later) and empty lines are ignored. The format of a statement is:

directive value

Each directive starts at the beginning of the line and is separated from value by white space (such as one or more space or tab characters). value consists of one or more quoted strings separated by white space. Use any of the following types of directives for the Solaris message file:

domain domainname
msgid message_identifier
msgstr message_string

For a GNU-compatible message file, use any of the following types of directives:

domain domainname
msgid message_identifier
msgid_plural untranslated_string_plural
msgstr message_string
msgstr[n] message_string

The behavior of the domain directive is affected by the options used. See OPTIONS for the behavior when the -o or --output-file options are specified. If the -o or --output-file options are not specified, the behavior of the domain directive is as follows:

The msgid directive specifies the value of a message identifier associated with the directive that follows it. The msgid_plural directive specifies the plural form message specified to the plural message handling functions ngettext(), dngettext(), or dcngettext(). The message_identifier string identifies a target string to be used at retrieval time. Each statement containing a msgid directive must be followed by a statement containing a msgstr directive or msgstr[n] directives.

The msgstr directive specifies the target string associated with the message_identifier string declared in the immediately preceding msgid directive.

The directive msgstr[n] (where n = 0, 1, 2, ...) specifies the target string to be used with plural form handling functions ngettext(), dngettext(), and dcngetttext().

Message strings can contain the escape sequences \n for newline, \t for tab, \v for vertical tab, \b for backspace, \r for carriage return, \f for formfeed, \\ for backslash, \" for double quote, \a for alarm, \ddd for octal bit pattern, and \xDD for hexadecimal bit pattern.

Comments for a GNU-compatible message file should be in one of the following formats (the msgfmt utility will ignore these comments when processing Solaris message files):

# translator-comments
#. automatic-comments
#: reference..
#, flag

The '#:' comments indicate the location of the msgid string in the source files in filename:line format. The '#', '#.', and '#:' comments are informative only and are silently ignored by the msgfmt utility. The '#,' comments require one or more flags separated by the comma character. The following flags can be specified:

fuzzy

c-format

no-c-format

In the GNU-compatible message file, the msgid entry with empty string ("") is called the header entry and treated specially. If the message string for the header entry contains nplurals=value, the value indicates the number of plural forms. For example, if nplurals=4, there are four plural forms. If nplurals is defined, the same line should contain plural=expression, separated by a semicolon character. The expression is a C language expression to determine which version of msgstr[n] is to be used based on the value of n, the last argument of ngettext(), dngettext(), or dcngettext(). For example,

nplurals=2; plural= n == 1 ? 0 : 1

indicates that there are two plural forms in the language. msgstr[0] is used if n == 1, otherwise msgstr[1] is used. For another example:

nplurals=3; plural= n == 1 ? 0 : n == 2 ? 1 : 2

indicates that there are three plural forms in the language. msgstr[0] is used if n == 1, msgstr[1] is used if n == 2, otherwise msgstr[2] is used.

If the header entry contains a charset=codeset string, the codeset is used to indicate the codeset to be used to encode the message strings. If the output string's codeset is different from the message string's codeset, codeset conversion from the message string's codeset to the output string's codeset will be performed upon the call of gettext(), dgettext(), dcgettext(), ngettext(), dngettext(), and dcngettext() for the GNU-compatible message catalogs. The output string's codeset is determined by the current locale's codeset (the return value of nl_langinfo(CODESET)) by default, and can be changed by the call of bind_textdomain_codeset().

The msgfmt utility can generate the message object both in Solaris message catalog file format and in GNU-compatible message catalog file format. If the -s option is specified and the input file is a Solaris .po file, the msgfmt utility generates the message object in Solaris message catalog file format. If the -g option is specified and the input file is a GNU .po file, the msgfmt utility generates the message object in GNU-compatible message catalog file format. If neither the -s nor -g option is specified, the msgfmt utility determines the message catalog file format as follows:

If the msgfmt utility determined that the Solaris message catalog file format is used, as above, but found the .po file contains directives that are specific to the GNU-compatible message catalog file format, such as msgid_plural and msgstr[n], the msgfmt utility handles those directives as invalid specifications.

Example 1 Creating message objects from message files

In this example, module1.po and module2.po are portable message objects files.

example% cat module1.po
# default domain "messages.mo"
msgid "msg 1"
msgstr "msg 1 translation"
#
domain "help_domain"
msgid "help 2"
msgstr "help 2 translation"
#
domain "error_domain"
msgid "error 3"
msgstr "error 3 translation"
example% cat module2.po
# default domain "messages.mo"
msgid "mesg 4"
msgstr "mesg 4 translation"
#
domain "error_domain"
msgid "error 5"
msgstr "error 5 translation"
#
domain "window_domain"
msgid "window 6"
msgstr "window 6 translation"

The following command will produce the output files messages.mo, help_domain.mo, and error_domain.mo in Solaris message catalog file format:

example% msgfmt module1.po

The following command will produce the output files messages.mo, help_domain.mo, error_domain.mo, and window_domain.mo in Solaris message catalog file format:

example% msgfmt module1.po module2.po

The following command will produce the output file hello.mo in Solaris message catalog file format:

example% msgfmt -o hello.mo module1.po module2.po

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environmental variables that affect the execution of msgfmt: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
CSI	Enabled

xgettext(1), gettext(3C), setlocale(3C), attributes(5), environ(5)

Installing message catalogs under the C locale is pointless, since they are ignored for the sake of efficiency.