What does _ ("text") do, i.e. Underscore char, do?

Question

What does _ ("text") do, i.e. Underscore char, do?

In C code, I came across this bit

_("test")

What is he doing? (I tried to see it myself, but, as you can imagine, search engines do not support finding this ...)

+5

c

navige Mar 6 '13 at 10:11

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1 answer

Ivaylo strandjev · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-06T10:14:23+0000

It calls a function with a name _. For instance:

#include <stdio.h>

void _(int a) {
    printf("%d",a);
}
int main(void) {
         _(3);
        return 0;
}

_is an existing function in gettext library and is used for internationalization. As said in this answer This function basically replaces the given string on runtime with a translation in the system language, if available (i.e. if they shipped a .mo file for this language with the program).

What does _ ("text") do, i.e. Underscore char, do?

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