catgets(3)

✨ catgets(3) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the Library Functions Manual 💖 this is the page for catgets, and it's literally the "get me one message out of a message catalog" girlie. no cap, she's small but she's iconic. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

catgets — get a message from a message catalog 🦋

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💜 LIBRARY 💜

Standard C library (that's libc, aka -lc) 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

#include <nl_types.h>

char *catgets(nl_catd catalog, int set_number, int message_number,
              const char *message);

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👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

so here's the vibe 🌈 catgets() reads message number message_number, inside set number set_number, out of the message catalog identified by catalog.

and where does catalog come from? it's a catalog descriptor you already got back from an earlier call to catopen(3). yes queen, you gotta call that one first, that's the whole pipeline 💅

the fourth argument, message, points to a default message string — and that's what catgets() hands back to you if the message catalog it's looking for is not currently available. it's giving "backup plan but make it a pointer" 😌

big important tea 🍓: the message text lives in an internal buffer area, so if you wanna save it or modify it, you (the application) have to copy it. don't go messing with the buffer, bestie, that's not yours 🙈

and the return string is always terminated with a null byte ('\0'). every single time. periodt. 💯

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⭐ RETURN VALUE ⭐

on success 🥳 catgets() returns a pointer to an internal buffer area holding the null-terminated message string.

on failure 😭 catgets() returns the value message.

that's it, that's the whole deal. simple, clean, slay.

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🦋 ATTRIBUTES 🦋

for the explanation of the terms used in this section, go peek at attributes(7) 👀

• catgets() — Thread safety — MT-Safe 💖

so yeah, she's MT-Safe. multiple threads can vibe with her at once, no drama. 🌸

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🎀 STANDARDS 🎀

• POSIX.1-2008.

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🌈 HISTORY 🌈

• POSIX.1-2001.
• catgets() is available only in libc.so.4.4.4c and above. ⭐
• the Jan 1987 X/Open Portability Guide specifies a more subtle error return: message is returned if the message catalog specified by catalog is not available, while an empty string is returned when the message catalog is available but does not contain the specified message. 😳 two different failure flavors!
• those two possible error returns seem to be discarded in SUSv2 in favor of always returning message. so yeah, the subtlety got dropped, and now it's just always message. 💀

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💅 SEE ALSO 💅

• catopen(3)
• setlocale(3)

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okay that's the whole page, you're officially educated 🧚💜 this was Linux man-pages 6.20, dated 2026-02-08, for catgets(3) — go forth and localize your messages, bestie, i'm obsessed with you 🫶✨