syntax questions

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

> 
> for some reason, people doing internationalization (i18n) and
> localization (l10n) stuff seem to prefer to use functions called
> "_", probably only to confuse people like you and me.
> 


1) it is guaranteed not to clash with the local namespace and in languages like
C that is all you have.  Once this became common in C it moved to other
languages because that way the coder need only learn one style.

2) it is short and so remains inconspicuous and does not hurt people trying to
fit code onto 78 char screens.  For the jerks fighting the l10n effort it was
much harder to fight _() than say translate().


One of the projects I work on uses i18n(string) which I like.