Editing Gettext (section)

== Plural form ==
The <code>ngettext()</code> interface accounts for the count of a noun in the string. As with the convention of <code>gettext()</code>, it is often aliased to <code>N_</code> in practical use. Consider the code sample:

<syntaxhighlight lang="C">
// parameters: english singular, english plural, integer count
printf(ngettext("%d translated message", "%d translated messages", n), n);
</syntaxhighlight>

A header in the <code>""</code> (empty string) entry of the PO file stores some metadata, one of which is the plural form that the language uses, usually specified using a C-style [[?:|ternary operator]]. Suppose we want to translate for the [[Slovene language]]:
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
msgid ""
msgstr ""
"..."
"Language: sl\n"
"Plural-Forms: nplurals=4; plural=(n%100==1 ? 1 : n%100==2 ? 2 : n%100==3 || n%100==4 ? 3 : 0);\n"
</syntaxhighlight>

Since now there are four plural forms, the final po would look like:<!-- example from gettext-tools/po/sl.po -->
<syntaxhighlight lang="po">
#: src/msgfmt.c:876
#, c-format
msgid "%d translated message"
msgid_plural "%d translated messages"
msgstr[0] "%d prevedenih sporočil"
msgstr[1] "%d prevedeno sporočilo"
msgstr[2] "%d prevedeni sporočili"
msgstr[3] "%d prevedena sporočila"
</syntaxhighlight>

Reference plural rules for languages are provided by the [[Unicode consortium]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Language Plural Rules |url=https://unicode.org/cldr/charts/latest/supplemental/language_plural_rules.html |website=unicode.org}}</ref> msginit also prefills the appropriate rule when creating a file for one specific language.<ref name=msginit/>