Build multi-language support into your Linux application with catgets
Putting It All Together
Listing 2 shows how to use catgets in a sample C program. The program first needs to open the catalog file using catopen()
. For every string the program needs to print, I first need to retrieve the string from the catalog using catgets()
. When the program is done using the catalog, a call to the catclose()
function closes it.
Listing 2
A Sample Program
Now when you compile and run the program, you will see the Klingon text nuqneH
instead of the default text Hello
.
$ gcc -o hello hello.o $ ./hello nuqneH
Extending the Program
In this article, I have described a simple example with a hard-coded path to the catalog file. To make this example more flexible, and to support multiple spoken languages, you can omit the path to the message catalog in the catopen()
function call and allow the program to look for a catalog file in some location defined by the system (Listing 3).
Listing 3
Omitting the Path
With this change, when you compile and run the new program, you can let the NLSPATH
environment variable determine where catopen()
will find the message catalog file. The NLSPATH
variable uses certain flags to stand in for other values, such as %N
for "the file itself." Let's say you set the NLSPATH
variable as NLSPATH=/path/to/messages/%N
. When you run the program, it will look for the hello.cat
message file as /path/to/messages/hello.cat
.
Infos
- catgets() – Retrieve a Message from a Message Catalog: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/i/7.3?topic=functions-catgets-retrieve-message-from-message-catalog
- The message catalog files (the GNU C Library): https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/The-message-catalog-files.html
- The gencat program (the GNU C Library): https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/The-gencat-program.html
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