[Rd] gettext(msgid, domain="R") doesn't work for some 'msgid':s

[Tomas Kalibera]

On 11/5/21 4:12 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 05/11/2021 10:51 a.m., Henrik Bengtsson wrote:
>> I'm trying to reuse some of the translations available in base R by 
>> using:
>>
>>    gettext(msgid, domain="R")
>>
>> This works great for most 'msgid's, e.g.
>>
>> $ LANGUAGE=de Rscript -e 'gettext("cannot get working directory", 
>> domain="R")'
>> [1] "kann das Arbeitsverzeichnis nicht ermitteln"
>>
>> However, it does not work for all.  For instance,
>>
>> $ LANGUAGE=de Rscript -e 'gettext("Execution halted\n", domain="R")'
>> [1] "Execution halted\n"
>>
>> This despite that 'msgid' existing in:
>>
>> $ grep -C 2 -F 'Execution halted\n' src/library/base/po/de.po
>>
>> #: src/main/main.c:342
>> msgid "Execution halted\n"
>> msgstr "Ausführung angehalten\n"
>>
>> It could be that the trailing newline causes problems, because the
>> same happens also for:
>>
>> $ LANGUAGE=de Rscript --vanilla -e 'gettext("error during cleanup\n",
>> domain="R")'
>> [1] "error during cleanup\n"
>>
>> Is this meant to work, and if so, how do I get it to work, or is it a 
>> bug?
>
> I don't know the solution, but I think the cause is different than you 
> think, because I also have the problem with other strings not 
> including "\n":
>
> $ LANGUAGE=de Rscript -e 'gettext("malformed version string", 
> domain="R")'
> [1] "malformed version string"

I can reproduce Henrik's report and the problem there is that the 
trailing \n is stripped by R before doing the lookup, in do_gettext


             /* strip leading and trailing white spaces and
                add back after translation */
             for(p = tmp;
                 *p && (*p == ' ' || *p == '\t' || *p == '\n');
                 p++, ihead++) ;

But, calling dgettext with the trailing \n does translate correctly for me.

I'd leave to translation experts how this should work (e.g. whether the 
.po files should have trailing newlines).

Tomas

>
> Duncan Murdoch
>
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