Re: [PATCH 2/2] ldd: Don't use Bash-only $"msgid" quoting

["Dmitry V. Levin" <ldv at altlinux dot org>]

On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 04:47:07PM -0500, P. J. McDermott wrote:
> On 2012-11-23 15:02, Dmitry V. Levin wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 01:23:14PM -0500, P. J. McDermott wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Well here's a patch that makes ldd use gettext.sh if found and otherwise
> >> define simple gettext and eval_gettext functions.  Though these
> >> functions should probably be defined more globally for use in other
> >> scripts in glibc.
> >>
> >> Comments/improvements?
> > [...]
> >> -TEXTDOMAIN=libc
> >> -TEXTDOMAINDIR=@TEXTDOMAINDIR@
> >> +export TEXTDOMAIN=libc
> >> +export TEXTDOMAINDIR=@TEXTDOMAINDIR@
> > 
> > One may note that this syntax is not quite portable.  Another issue
> > with exported variables is that they leak to processes being traced.
> 
> The exporting is necessary for the gettext utility.
> 
> An alternative would be a wrapper function that calls gettext like:
> 
>     TEXTDOMAIN=libc TEXTDOMAINDIR=@TEXTDOMAINDIR@ gettext "$1"
> 
> Should we do that instead?

Yes, I suppose that would be better.

> Would something like this be better?
> 
>     if ! gettext 2>/dev/null; then
>       gettext ()
>       {
>         #...
>       }
>     fi

Not exactly that way because gettext without arguments exits with a
non-zero status.  I'd rather use a lazy evaluation, e.g.

a_wrapper_function_that_calls_gettext ()
{
	if TEXTDOMAIN=libc TEXTDOMAINDIR=@TEXTDOMAINDIR@ \
	   gettext '' >/dev/null 2>&1; then
		a_wrapper_function_that_calls_gettext ()
		{
			TEXTDOMAIN=libc TEXTDOMAINDIR=@TEXTDOMAINDIR@ \
			gettext "$1"
		}
	else
		a_wrapper_function_that_calls_gettext ()
		{
			printf %s "$1"
		}
	fi
	a_wrapper_function_that_calls_gettext "$1"
}
	
> In fact, gettext.sh is only needed for the definition of eval_gettext.

In that case we can happily avoid gettext.sh

> >> -    echo >&2 $"ldd: option \`$1' is ambiguous"
> >> +    echo >&2 "$(eval_gettext "ldd: option \`\$1' is ambiguous")"
> > 
> > Let's transform original
> > echo >&2 $"ldd: option \`$1' is ambiguous"
> > to
> > printf >&2 $"ldd: option \`%s' is ambiguous\n" "$1"
> > so that it could be later changed e.g. to
> > printf >&2 "$(gettext "ldd: option \`%s' is ambiguous\n")" "$1"
> 
> I thought the convention with gettext in shell command language was to
> use variable expansions with echo instead of format strings with printf
> (also I tried to not modify translatable strings).  I'm probably wrong.

There are only four shell scripts in the tree that set TEXTDOMAIN=libc, and
these scripts use both echo and printf without any obvious conventions.

With regards to modifications of translatable strings, I suppose it's OK
unless the branch is frozen and libc.pot is already sent for translations.

> Either way, I do prefer using printf (for this reason and others).

Let's use printf then.  That could be implemented in two commits, the
first one that changes strings with variable expansions to format strings,
and the second that introduces gettext.


-- 
ldv

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