11.1.1 The Interface

The interface to the catgets implementation consists of three functions which correspond to those used in file access: catopen to open the catalog for using, catgets for accessing the message tables, and catclose for closing after work is done. Prototypes for the functions and the needed definitions are in the <nl_types.h> header file.

catopen is used like in this:

nl_catd catd = catopen ("catalog_name", 0);

The function takes as the argument the name of the catalog. This usual refers to the name of the program or the package. The second parameter is not further specified in the standard. I don’t even know whether it is implemented consistently among various systems. So the common advice is to use 0 as the value. The return value is a handle to the message catalog, equivalent to handles to file returned by open.

This handle is of course used in the catgets function which can be used like this:

char *translation = catgets (catd, set_no, msg_id, "original string");

The first parameter is this catalog descriptor. The second parameter specifies the set of messages in this catalog, in which the message described by msg_id is obtained. catgets therefore uses a three-stage addressing:

catalog name ⇒ set number ⇒ message ID ⇒ translation

The fourth argument is not used to address the translation. It is given as a default value in case when one of the addressing stages fail. One important thing to remember is that although the return type of catgets is char * the resulting string must not be changed. It should better be const char *, but the standard is published in 1988, one year before ANSI C.

The last of these functions is used and behaves as expected:

catclose (catd);

After this no catgets call using the descriptor is legal anymore.