MAKETEXT(1)

💖 MAKETEXT(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to maketext — it lives in section 1 of the manual (User Contributed Perl Documentation, no cap), and it's literally the girl who translates ur messages and does the plural math for u. let's get into it ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

maketext — translate and make messages 🦋

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

maketext [OPTION] [--domain=TEXTDOMAIN] MSGKEY [PARAM...]
maketext [OPTION] -s MSGKEY [PARAM...]

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💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so the maketext script takes a natural language message and translates it into the user's language, by looking up the translation in a message MO file, and then it handles the plural transformation with Maketext. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

maketext is a command-line interface to Locale::Maketext::Gettext(3) (and Locale::Maketext(3)). it can be used in shell scripts, etc, to translate, maketext and return the result. and the way that works is it enables Maketext to be integrated into other programming languages/systems, like bash/csh, python, PHP, C, etc. it works like the command-line program gettext. iconic honestly. 👑

for example:

% maketext -s "[*,_1,virus was,viruses were] found in [*,_2,file,files]." 0 1
0 viruses were found in 1 file.
% maketext -s "[*,_1,virus was,viruses were] found in [*,_2,file,files]." 1 3
1 virus was found in 3 files.
%

see how it ate?? the plural agreement is doing its little main character moment. 🔥

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -d, --domain=TEXTDOMAIN — retrieve translated messages from TEXTDOMAIN.
• -s — adds a new line to the end of the output so that it behaves like the echo or the gettext command.
• -h, --help — display the help messages.
• -V, --version — display version information and exit.
• MSGKEY — the original text used to look up translated text.
• PARAM... — parameters to Maketext for the plural and other text functions.

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• TEXTDOMAIN — TEXTDOMAIN is used to determine the text domain when the -d parameter is not given.
• TEXTDOMAINDIR — TEXTDOMAINDIR is used to search the message catalog/MO file if it does not reside in the system locale directories.

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🦋 NOTES 🦋

Maketext language function override, like quant or numerate, is not available here. suggestions are welcome. 🙈

the current system locale directory search order is: /usr/share/locale, /usr/lib/locale, /usr/local/share/locale, /usr/local/lib/locale. suggestions are welcome. (yes, that's the same "suggestions are welcome" twice — she said it, so we say it 💜)

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💀 BUGS 💀

report bugs to imacat <imacat@mail.imacat.idv.tw> — don't be shy, fr fr.

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

Locale::Maketext(3), Locale::Maketext::TPJ13(3), Locale::Maketext::Gettext(3), Locale::Maketext::Gettext::Functions(3), bindtextdomain(3), textdomain(3). also, please refer to the official GNU gettext manual at <https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/manual/>.

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

imacat <imacat@mail.imacat.idv.tw>

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright (c) 2003-2021 imacat. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

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and that's the whole page bestie!! this one's from perl v5.42.0, dated 2025-07-25, and it's your girl MAKETEXT(1) signing off 💖✨🎀 go translate something gorgeous 🦋🌸🫶