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,
       respectively.  Additionally, they choose the appropriate
       plural form, which depends on the number n and the  lan-
       guage  of  the message catalog where the translation was
       found.

       In the "C" locale, or if none of the used catalogs  con-
       tain  a  translation  for msgid, the ngettext, dngettext
       and dcngettext functions return msgid  if  n  ==  1,  or
       msgid_plural 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 ALSO
       gettext(3), dgettext(3), dcgettext(3)



GNU gettext 0.14.4          May 2001                NGETTEXT(3)
