gencat(CP)

Syntax

Description

The following options are recognized by gencat:

-

Use standard output or standard input in the place of (respectively) catfile or msgfile.

-X

Inhibits the check for portability to X/Open.

The format of a message text source file is defined as follows. Note that the fields of a message text source line are separated by a single ASCII space or tab character. Any other ASCII spaces or tabs are considered as being part of the subsequent field.

$set n comment

n specifies the set identifier of the following messages until the next $set, $delset, or end-of-file appears. n must be a number in the range 1 through {NL_SETMAX}. Set identifiers within a single source file need not be contiguous. Any string following the set identifier is treated as a comment. If no $set directive is specified in a message text source file, all messages will be located in the default message set NL_SETD.

$delset n comment

Delete message set n from an existing message catalog. Any string following the set number is treated as a comment. (If n is not a valid set it is ignored.)

$ comment

A line beginning with a dollar symbol ``$'' followed by an ASCII space or tab character is treated as a comment.

m message-text

The m denotes the message identifier, which is a number in the range 1 through {NL_MSGMAX}. The message-text is stored in the message catalog with the set identifier specified by the last $set directive, and with message identifier m. If the message-text is empty, and an ASCII space or tab field separator is present, an empty string is stored in the message catalog. If a message source line has a message number, but neither a field separator nor message-text, the existing message with that number (if any) is deleted from the catalog. Message identifiers need not be contiguous. The length of message-text must be in the range 0 through {NL_TEXTMAX}.

$quote c

This line specifies an optional quote character c, which can be used to surround message-text so that trailing spaces or null (empty) messages are visible in a message source line. By default, or if an empty $quote directive is supplied, no quoting of message-text will be recognized.

Empty lines in a message text source file are ignored.

Text strings can contain the special characters and escape sequences defined in the following table:

newline	NL(LF)	\n
horizontal tab	HT	\t
vertical tab	VT	\v
backspace	BS	\b
carriage return	CR	\r
form feed	FF	\f
backslash	\	\\
bit pattern	ddd	\ddd

                       newline           NL(LF)   \n
                       horizontal tab    HT       \t
                       vertical tab      VT       \v
                       backspace         BS       \b
                       carriage return   CR       \r
                       form feed         FF       \f
                       backslash         \        \\
                       bit pattern       ddd      \ddd

The escape sequence \ddd consists of backslash followed by 1, 2 or 3 octal digits, which are taken to specify the value of the desired character. If the character following a backslash is not one of those specified, the backslash is ignored. Backslash followed by an ASCII newline character is also used to continue a string on the following line. Thus, the following two lines describe a single message string:

   1 This line continues \
   to the next line

which is equivalent to:

   1 This line continues to the next line

Exit values

Notes

gencat and dumpmsg are capable of handling message catalogs with variable-length filenames in their file headers. To convert old message catalogs to this format, use the following example as a model:

   dumpmsg old.cat new.msg
   gencat new.cat new.msg

See also

Standards conformance