NGETTEXT(3)            FreeBSD Library Functions Manual            NGETTEXT(3)

NAME

     ngettext, dngettext, dcngettext - translate message and choose plural
     form

SYNOPSIS

     #include <libintl.h>

     char * ngettext (const char * msgid, const char * msgid_plural,
                      unsigned long int n);
     char * dngettext (const char * domainname,
                       const char * msgid, const char * msgid_plural,
                       unsigned long int n);
     char * dcngettext (const char * domainname,
                        const char * msgid, const char * msgid_plural,
                        unsigned long int n, int category);

DESCRIPTION

     The ngettext, dngettext and dcngettext functions attempt to translate a
     text string into the user's native language, by looking up the
     appropriate plural form of the translation in a message catalog.

     Plural forms are grammatical variants depending on the a number. Some
     languages have two forms, called singular and plural. Other languages
     have three forms, called singular, dual and plural. There are also
     languages with four forms.

     The ngettext, dngettext and dcngettext functions work like the gettext,
     dgettext and dcgettext functions, respectively.  Additionally, they
     choose the appropriate plural form, which depends on the number n and the
     language of the message catalog where the translation was found.

     In the "C" locale, or if none of the used catalogs contain a translation
     for msgid, the ngettext, dngettext and dcngettext functions return msgid
     if n == 1, or msgid_plural if n != 1.

RETURN VALUE

     If a translation was found in one of the specified catalogs, the
     appropriate plural form is converted to the locale's codeset and
     returned. The resulting string is statically allocated and must not be
     modified or freed. Otherwise msgid or msgid_plural is returned, as
     described above.

ERRORS

     errno is not modified.

BUGS

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

SEE ALSO

     gettext(3), dgettext(3), dcgettext(3)

GNU gettext 1.0                    May 2001                        NGETTEXT(3)