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

On Tue, Apr 7, 2026 at 3:05 PM Peter Smith <smithpb2250(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> 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
>

PSA patch v2.

v2 removes translation of the comma separator, due to the discussion
over at [1].

======
[1] https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/CAApHDvoFSu5zLFvx96aZ5wvL7tcB9aR2hBPCaMPs8D_f0Z7eSw%40mail.gmail.com

Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia