Re: Redundant/mis-use of _(x) gettext macro?

On Wed, Apr 1, 2026 at 10:52 PM Álvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)kurilemu(dot)de> wrote:
>
> On 2026-Apr-01, Peter Smith wrote:
>
> > Hi.
> >
> > As originally reported [1] in the EXCEPT (TABLE ...) thread, I felt
> > the _() gettext macro is mis-used when it contains nothing but a
> > quoted format string.
>
> No, you feel wrong -- this is necessary so that the translator has
> control over the quoting style of a list of items. Not all translations
> use double quoting. Some examples from different language files:
>
> msgstr "unbekannte Komprimierungsoption: »%s«"
> msgstr "opción de compresión no reconocida: «%s»"
> msgstr "option de compression inconnue : « %s »"
> msgstr "tidak dapat menentukan encoding untuk lokal « %s » : codesetnya adalah « %s »"
>

The explanation [1] that even the comma separators and the quotes are
translatable parts of the message reminded me to revisit the
`GetPublicationsStr` function.

This function builds a comma-separated list of publication names.

It is called in 2 scenarios:
1. to construct a pubname list to be included in some SQL (here,
parameter quote_literal=true)
2. to construct a pubname list to be included in some error message
(here, parameter quote_literal=false).

In hindsight, it looks like this function has been broken since it was
originally implemented 4 yrs ago (8f2e2bb), because it does not allow
translation of commas and quotes when the result is being used for
error messages.

PSA a patch to fix that.

======
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/202604011144.jeo56tazdx6z%40alvherre.pgsql

Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia