BIND_TEXTDOMAIN_CODESET

Section: C Library Functions (3)
Updated: May 2001
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NAME

bind_textdomain_codeset - set encoding of message translations

SYNOPSIS

#include <libintl.h>

char * bind_textdomain_codeset (const char * domainname,
                                const char * codeset);

DESCRIPTION

The bind_textdomain_codeset function sets the output codeset for message catalogs for domain domainname.

A message domain is a set of translatable msgid messages. Usually, every software package has its own message domain.

By default, the gettext family of functions returns translated messages in the locale's character encoding, which can be retrieved as nl_langinfo(CODESET). The need for calling bind_textdomain_codeset arises for programs which store strings in a locale independent way (e.g. UTF-8) and want to avoid an extra character set conversion on the returned translated messages.

domainname must be a non-empty string.

If codeset is not NULL, it must be a valid encoding name which can be used for the iconv_open function. The bind_textdomain_codeset function sets the output codeset for message catalogs belonging to domain domainname to codeset. The function makes copies of the argument strings as needed.

If codeset is NULL, the function returns the previously set codeset for domain domainname. The default is NULL, denoting the locale's character encoding.

RETURN VALUE

If successful, the bind_textdomain_codeset function returns the current codeset for domain domainname, after possibly changing it. The resulting string is valid until the next bind_textdomain_codeset call for the same domainname and must not be modified or freed. If a memory allocation failure occurs, it sets errno to ENOMEM and returns NULL. If no codeset has been set for domain domainname, it returns NULL.

ERRORS

The following error can occur, among others:

ENOMEM: Not enough memory available.

BUGS

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