Combining the message catalog and the application program

This section describes how to compile the message catalog and how to locate it so that the application can use it.

Example 3-4 Setup program

  1 set -x
  2 NLSPATH=./%l/%N
  3 export NLSPATH

  4 gencat english/hello.cat english/hello.text
  5 gencat french/hello.cat french/hello.text

  6 cc hello.c -o hello
  7 set +x

line 2

Defines the NLSPATH variable which contains the path where the message catalogs are contained. The ``%l'' extracts the string defined in the LANG environment variable and the ``%N'' extracts the string from the name argument from the catopen(S) routine. If the value in the LANG variable is ``english'', the message catalog file in in our example would be ./english/hello.cat

line 3

Exports this definition so that the NLSPATH variable is defined permanently in this shell session.

lines 4-5

Creates the .cat files for both the French and English message. The source files are compiled into binary files understood by the cataloging routines.

line 6

Compiles the source for the main application program using the message catalogs.