13.7 Summary ¶
- Internationalization means writing a program such that it can use multiple
languages without requiring source code changes. Localization means
providing the data necessary for an internationalized program to work
in a particular language.
gawk uses GNU gettext to let you internationalize
and localize awk programs. A program’s text domain identifies
the program for grouping all messages and other data together.
- You mark a program’s strings for translation by preceding them with
an underscore. Once that is done, the strings are extracted into a
.pot file. This file is copied for each language into a .po
file, and the .po files are compiled into .gmo files for
use at runtime.
- You can use positional specifications with
sprintf() and
printf to rearrange the placement of argument values in formatted
strings and output. This is useful for the translation of format
control strings.
- The internationalization features have been designed so that they
can be easily worked around in a standard
awk.
gawk itself has been internationalized and ships with
a number of translations for its messages.