NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | RETURN VALUE | ERRORS | BUGS | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

BINDTEXTDOMAIN(3)         Library Functions Manual         BINDTEXTDOMAIN(3)

NAME         top

       bindtextdomain - set directory containing message catalogs

SYNOPSIS         top

       #include <libintl.h>
       char * bindtextdomain (const char * domainname, const char * dirname);

DESCRIPTION         top

       The bindtextdomain function sets the base directory of the hierarchy
       containing message catalogs for a given message domain.
       A message domain is a set of translatable msgid messages. Usually,
       every software package has its own message domain. The need for
       calling bindtextdomain arises because packages are not always
       installed with the same prefix as the <libintl.h> header and the
       libc/libintl libraries.
       Message catalogs will be expected at the pathnames
       dirname/locale/category/domainname.mo, where locale is a locale name
       and category is a locale facet such as LC_MESSAGES.
       domainname must be a non-empty string.
       If dirname is not NULL, the base directory for message catalogs
       belonging to domain domainname is set to dirname. The function makes
       copies of the argument strings as needed. If the program wishes to
       call the chdir function, it is important that dirname be an absolute
       pathname; otherwise it cannot be guaranteed that the message catalogs
       will be found.
       If dirname is NULL, the function returns the previously set base
       directory for domain domainname.

RETURN VALUE         top

       If successful, the bindtextdomain function returns the current base
       directory for domain domainname, after possibly changing it. The
       resulting string is valid until the next bindtextdomain call for the
       same domainname and must not be modified or freed. If a memory
       allocation failure occurs, it sets errno to ENOMEM and returns NULL.

ERRORS         top

       The following error can occur, among others:
       ENOMEM Not enough memory available.

BUGS         top

       The return type ought to be const char *, but is char * to avoid
       warnings in C code predating ANSI C.

SEE ALSO         top

       gettext(3), dgettext(3), dcgettext(3), ngettext(3), dngettext(3),
       dcngettext(3), textdomain(3), realpath(3)

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the gettext (message translation) project.
       Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/⟩.  If you have a bug report for
       this manual page, see ⟨http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gettext/⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository 
       ⟨git://git.savannah.gnu.org/gettext.git⟩ on 2017-07-05.  If you dis‐
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       COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
       to man-pages@man7.org
GNU gettext 0.19.8.1.6-c77646     May 2001                 BINDTEXTDOMAIN(3)

Pages that refer to this page: gettext(3)textdomain(3)