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@command{awk} Portability Issues

@command{gawk}'s internationalization features were purposely chosen to have as little impact as possible on the portability of @command{awk} programs that use them to other versions of @command{awk}. Consider this program:

BEGIN {
    TEXTDOMAIN = "guide"
    if (Test_Guide)   # set with -v
        bindtextdomain("/test/guide/messages")
    print _"don't panic!"
}

As written, it won't work on other versions of @command{awk}. However, it is actually almost portable, requiring very little change.

• Assignments to TEXTDOMAIN won't have any effect, since TEXTDOMAIN is not special in other @command{awk} implementations.
• Non-GNU versions of @command{awk} treat marked strings as the concatenation of a variable named _ with the string following it.(45)" contest.} Typically, the variable _ has the null string ("") as its value, leaving the original string constant as the result.
• By defining "dummy" functions to replace dcgettext and bindtextdomain, the @command{awk} program can be made to run, but all the messages are output in the original language. For example:

  function bindtextdomain(dir, domain)
  {
      return dir
  }
  
  function dcgettext(string, domain, category)
  {
      return string
  }
  

• The use of positional specifications in printf or sprintf is not portable. To support gettext at the C level, many systems' C versions of sprintf do support positional specifiers. But it works only if enough arguments are supplied in the function call. Many versions of @command{awk} pass printf formats and arguments unchanged to the underlying C library version of sprintf, but only one format and argument at a time. What happens if a positional specification is used is anybody's guess. However, since the positional specifications are primarily for use in translated format strings, and since non-GNU @command{awk}s never retrieve the translated string, this should not be a problem in practice.

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