printf_ngettext Invocation (GNU gettext utilities)

16.5.15.11 Invoking the printf_ngettext program ¶

printf_ngettext [option] format format-plural count [argument]...

The printf_ngettext program produces formatted output, applying the native language translation of format and format-plural, depending on count, to the arguments.

Options and arguments

‘-c context’ ¶

‘--context=context’

Specify the context for the format string to be translated. See Using contexts for solving ambiguities for details.

‘format’

English singular form of format string.

‘format-plural’

English plural form of format string.

‘count’

A cardinal number. The singular/plural form is chosen based on this value.

‘argument’

A string or numeric argument.

Informative output

‘-h’ ¶

‘--help’

Display this help and exit.

‘-V’ ¶

‘--version’

Output version information and exit.

Each format string consists of

• plain text,
• directives, that start with ‘%’,
• escape sequences, that start with a backslash.

A directive that consumes an argument

• starts with ‘%’ or ‘%m$’ where m is a positive integer,
• is optionally followed by any of the characters ‘#’, ‘0’, ‘-’, ‘’, ‘+’, each of which acts as a flag,
• is optionally followed by a width specification (a nonnegative integer),
• is optionally followed by ‘.’ and a precision specification (an optional nonnegative integer),
• is finished by a specifier
  • ‘c’, that prints a character,
  • ‘s’, that prints a string,
  • ‘i’, ‘d’, that print an integer,
  • ‘u’, ‘o’, ‘x’, ‘X’, that print an unsigned (nonnegative) integer,
  • ‘e’, ‘E’, that print a floating-point number in scientific notation,
  • ‘f’, ‘F’, that print a floating-point number without an exponent,
  • ‘g’, ‘G’, that print a floating-point number in general notation,
  • ‘a’, ‘A’, that print a floating-point number in hexadecimal notation.

Some flag+specifier combinations are invalid:

• The ‘#’ flag with the specifiers ‘c’, ‘s’, ‘i’, ‘d’, ‘u’.
• The ‘0’ flag with the specifiers ‘c’, ‘s’.

Additionally there is the directive ‘%%’, that prints a single %.

If a directive specifies the argument by its number (‘%m$’ notation), all directives that consume an argument must do so.

The escape sequences are:

\\

backslash

\a

alert (BEL)

\b

backspace (BS)

\f

form feed (FF)

\n

new line (LF)

\r

carriage return (CR)

\t

horizontal tab (HT)

\v

vertical tab (VT)

\nnn

octal number with 1 to 3 octal digits

Environment Variables

The translation of the format string is looked up in the translation domain given by the environment variable TEXTDOMAIN.

It is looked up in the catalogs directory given by the environment variable TEXTDOMAINDIR or, if not present, in the default catalogs directory.

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