GNU gettext utilities: gettext Invocation

15.5.12.3 Invoking the gettext program

gettext [option] [[textdomain] msgid]
gettext [option] -s [msgid]...

The gettext program displays the native language translation of a textual message.

Arguments

‘-c context’ ‘--context=context’

Specify the context for the messages to be translated. See Contexts for details.

‘-d textdomain’ ‘--domain=textdomain’

Retrieve translated messages from textdomain. Usually a textdomain corresponds to a package, a program, or a module of a program.

‘-e’

Enable expansion of some escape sequences. This option is for compatibility with the ‘echo’ program or shell built-in. The escape sequences ‘\a’, ‘\b’, ‘\c’, ‘\f’, ‘\n’, ‘\r’, ‘\t’, ‘\v’, ‘\\’, and ‘\’ followed by one to three octal digits, are interpreted like the System V ‘echo’ program did.

‘-E’

This option is only for compatibility with the ‘echo’ program or shell built-in. It has no effect.

‘-h’ ‘--help’

Display this help and exit.

‘-n’

This option has only an effect if the -s option is given. It suppresses the additional newline at the end.

‘-V’ ‘--version’

Output version information and exit.

‘[textdomain] msgid’

Retrieve translated message corresponding to msgid from textdomain.

If the textdomain parameter is not given, the domain is determined from the environment variable TEXTDOMAIN. If the message catalog is not found in the regular directory, another location can be specified with the environment variable TEXTDOMAINDIR.

When used with the -s option the program behaves like the ‘echo’ command. But it does not simply copy its arguments to stdout. Instead those messages found in the selected catalog are translated. Also, a newline is added at the end, unless either the option -n is specified or the option -e is specified and some of the argument strings contains a ‘\c’ escape sequence.

Note: xgettext supports only the one-argument form of the gettext invocation, where no options are present and the textdomain is implicit, from the environment.