Locale::PO - Perl module for manipulating .po entries from GNU gettext

  use Locale::PO;

  $po = new Locale::PO([-option=>value,...])
  [$string =] $po->msgid([new string]);
  [$string =] $po->msgstr([new string]);
  [$string =] $po->comment([new string]);
  [$string =] $po->automatic([new string]);
  [$string =] $po->reference([new string]);
  [$value =] $po->fuzzy([value]);
  [$value =] $po->c_format([value]);
  print $po->dump;

  $quoted_string = $po->quote($string);
  $string = $po->dequote($quoted_string);

  $aref = Locale::PO->load_file_asarray(<filename>);
  $href = Locale::PO->load_file_ashash(<filename>);
  Locale::PO->save_file_fromarray(<filename>,$aref);
  Locale::PO->save_file_fromhash(<filename>,$href);

This module simplifies management of GNU gettext .po files and is an alternative to using emacs po-mode. It provides an object-oriented interface in which each entry in a .po file is a Locale::PO object.

new

Create a new Locale::PO object to represent a po entry. You can optionally set the attributes of the entry by passing a list/hash of the form:

 -option=>value, -option=>value, etc.

Where options are msgid, msgstr, comment, automatic, reference, fuzzy, and c-format. See accessor methods below. To generate a po file header, add an entry with an empty msgid, like this:

   $po = new Locale::PO(-msgid=>'', -msgstr=>
        "Project-Id-Version: PACKAGE VERSION\\n" .
        "PO-Revision-Date: YEAR-MO-DA HO:MI +ZONE\\n" .
        "Last-Translator: FULL NAME <EMAIL@ADDRESS>\\n" .
        "Language-Team: LANGUAGE <LL@li.org>\\n" .
        "MIME-Version: 1.0\\n" .
        "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=CHARSET\\n" .
        "Content-Transfer-Encoding: ENCODING\\n");

msgid

Set or get the untranslated string from the object.

msgstr

Set or get the translated string from the object.

comment

Set or get translator comments from the object.

automatic

Set or get automatic comments from the object (inserted by emacs po-mode or xgettext).

reference

Set or get reference marking comments from the object (inserted by emacs po-mode or gettext).

fuzzy

Set or get the fuzzy flag on the object (check this translation). When setting, use 1 to turn on fuzzy, and 0 to turn it off.

c_format

Set or get the c-format or no-c-format flag on the object. This can take 3 values: 1 implies c-format, 0 implies no-c-format, and blank or undefined implies neither.

dump

Returns the entry as a string, suitable for output to a po file.

quote

Applies po quotation rules to a string, and returns the quoted string. The quoted string will have all existing double-quote characters escaped by backslashes, and will be enclosed in double quotes.

dequote

Returns a quoted po string to its natural form.

load_file_asarray

Given the filename of a po-file, reads the file and returns a reference to a list of Locale::PO objects corresponding to the contents of the file, in the same order.

load_file_ashash

Given the filename of a po-file, reads the file and returns a reference to a hash of Locale::PO objects corresponding to the contents of the file. The hash keys are the untranslated strings, so this is a cheap way to remove duplicates. The method will prefer to keep entries that have been translated.

save_file_fromarray

Given a filename and a reference to a list of Locale::PO objects, saves those objects to the file, creating a po-file.

save_file_fromhash

Given a filename and a reference to a hash of Locale::PO objects, saves those objects to the file, creating a po-file. The entries are sorted alphabetically by untranslated string.

Alan Schwartz, alansz@pennmush.org

If you load_file then save_file, the output file may have slight cosmetic differences from the input file (an extra blank line here or there).

xgettext(1).