Locale:...:Lexicon(3)

📦

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💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the Locale:...:Lexicon(3) page from User Contributed Perl Documentation — it's all about Locale::Maketext::Lexicon, aka the module that lets you Use other catalog formats in Maketext. periodt 💅

🌸 VERSION 🌸

version 1.00 — yes, that's the version at the top, bestie. We'll get to the other VERSION section later and it's giving plot twist energy 🔁

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so first vibe: you use it as part of a localization class, and it automatically globs for available lexicons:

package Hello::I18N;
use base 'Locale::Maketext';
use Locale::Maketext::Lexicon {
    '*' => [Gettext => '/usr/local/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/hello.mo'],
    ### Uncomment to fallback when a key is missing from lexicons
    # _auto   => 1,
    ### Uncomment to decode lexicon entries into Unicode strings
    # _decode => 1,
    ### Uncomment to load and parse everything right away
    # _preload => 1,
    ### Uncomment to use %1 / %quant(%1) instead of [_1] / [quant, _1]
    # _style  => 'gettext',
};

you can also explicitly specify languages, during compile- or run-time:

package Hello::I18N;
use base 'Locale::Maketext';
use Locale::Maketext::Lexicon {
    de => [Gettext => 'hello_de.po'],
    fr => [
        Gettext => 'hello_fr.po',
        Gettext => 'local/hello/fr.po',
    ],
};
# ... incrementally add new lexicons
Locale::Maketext::Lexicon->import({
    de => [Gettext => 'local/hello/de.po'],
})

alternatively, it can be part of a localization subclass:

package Hello::I18N::de;
use base 'Hello::I18N';
use Locale::Maketext::Lexicon (Gettext => \*DATA);
__DATA__
# Some sample data
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"Project-Id-Version: Hello 1.3.22.1\n"
"MIME-Version: 1.0\n"
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso8859-1\n"
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n"

#: Hello.pm:10
msgid "Hello, World!"
msgstr "Hallo, Welt!"

#: Hello.pm:11
msgid "You have %quant(%1,piece) of mail."
msgstr "Sie haben %quant(%1,Poststueck,Poststuecken)."

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

this module provides lexicon-handling modules to read from other localization formats, such as Gettext, Msgcat, and so on. it's giving multilingual main character energy 🌍✨

if you are unfamiliar with the concept of lexicon modules, please consult Locale::Maketext and the "webl10n" HTML files in the "docs/" directory of this module.

a command-line utility xgettext.pl is also installed with this module, for extracting translatable strings from source files. yesss, it's not just vibes — there's tooling 🛠️

🎀 The `import` function 🎀

the import() function accepts two forms of arguments:

(format => source ... ) — this form takes any number of argument pairs (usually one); source may be a file name, a filehandle, or an array reference.

for each such pair, it passes the contents specified by the second argument to Locale::Maketext::Lexicon::format->parse as a plain list, and exports its return value as the %Lexicon hash in the calling package.

in the case that there are multiple such pairs, the lexicon defined by latter ones overrides earlier ones. no cap, last one wins 💀

{ language => [ format, source ... ] ... } — this form accepts a hash reference. it will export a %Lexicon into the subclasses specified by each language, using the process described above. it is designed to alleviate the need to set up a separate subclass for each localized language, and just use the catalog files.

this module will convert the language arguments into lowercase, and replace all "-" with "_", so "zh_TW" and "zh-tw" will both map to the "zh_tw" subclass. slay normalization 💅

if language begins with "_", it is taken as an option that controls how lexicons are parsed. see "Options" for a list of available options.

the "*" is a special language; it must be used in conjunction with a filename that also contains "*"; all matched files with a valid language code in the place of "*" will be automatically prepared as a lexicon subclass. if there is multiple "*" in the filename, the last one is used as the language name.

🌈 Options 🌈

_auto — if set to a true value, missing lookups on lexicons are handled silently, as if an "Auto" lexicon has been appended on all language lexicons.
_decode — if set to a true value, source entries will be converted into utf8-strings (available in Perl 5.6.1 or later). this feature needs the Encode or Encode::compat module.

currently, only the "Gettext" backend supports this option.

_encoding — this option only has effect when _decode is set to true. it specifies an encoding to store lexicon entries, instead of utf8-strings.

if _encoding is set to "locale", the encoding from the current locale setting is used.

_preload — by default parsing is delayed until first use of the lexicon, set this option to true value to parse it asap. increment adding lexicons forces parsing.

🧚 Subclassing format handlers 🧚

if you wish to override how sources specified in different data types are handled, please use a subclass that overrides "lexicon_get_TYPE".

XXX: not documented well enough yet. Patches welcome. — bestie, they said it themselves, and honestly? iconic transparency 🙈

🔁 VERSION 🔁

this document describes version 0.91 of Locale::Maketext::Lexicon.

yes, there are two VERSION sections and they say different numbers. that's what the page says, don't come for me 💀

⭐ NOTES ⭐

when you attempt to localize an entry missing in the lexicon, Maketext will throw an exception by default. to inhibit this behaviour, override the _AUTO key in your language subclasses, for example:

$Hello::I18N::en::Lexicon{_AUTO} = 1; # autocreate missing keys

if you want to implement a new "Lexicon::*" backend module, please note that parse() takes an array containing the source strings from the specified filehandle or filename, which are not "chomp"ed. although if the source is an array reference, its elements will probably not contain any newline characters anyway.

the parse() function should return a hash reference, which will be assigned to the typeglob (*Lexicon) of the language module. all it amounts to is that if the returned reference points to a tied hash, the %Lexicon will be aliased to the same tied hash if it was not initialized previously. lowkey tied-hash lore 🫶

💜 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 💜

thanks to Jesse Vincent for suggesting this module to be written.
thanks also to Sean M. Burke for coming up with Locale::Maketext in the first place, and encouraging me to experiment with alternative Lexicon syntaxes.
thanks also to Yi Ma Mao for providing the MO file parsing subroutine, as well as inspiring me to implement file globbing and transcoding support.
see the AUTHORS file in the distribution for a list of people who have sent helpful patches, ideas or comments.

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

xgettext.pl for extracting translatable strings from common template systems and perl source files.
Locale::Maketext, Locale::Maketext::Lexicon::Auto, Locale::Maketext::Lexicon::Gettext, Locale::Maketext::Lexicon::Msgcat, Locale::Maketext::Lexicon::Tie

👑 AUTHORS 👑

Audrey Tang <cpan@audreyt.org> — icon, legend, the moment 💅

🎀 COPYRIGHT 🎀

this software is released under the MIT license cited below.

The `MIT` License

legal text stays verbatim, bestie — lawyers do not accept group-chat remixes 🫶

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

👑 AUTHORS 👑 (round two)

Clinton Gormley <drtech@cpan.org>
Audrey Tang <cpan@audreyt.org>

🌈 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 🌈

this is free software, licensed under:

The MIT (X11) License

okay bye bestie 🫶 this page came from source/version perl v5.40.2, dated 2025-01-03, and it's still the Locale:...:Lexicon(3) manual — slay, stay localized, and hydrate before your next glob 💖✨

📦 where this page comes from

alpine 3.22: perl-locale-maketext-lexicon-doc 1.00-r6 · Artistic-1.0-Perl OR GPL-1.0-or-later
💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash-1017 on 2026-11-06: a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms