Expanded comments to src/libpspp/i18n.[ch]

[pspp-builds.git] / src / libpspp / i18n.c

diff --git a/src/libpspp/i18n.c b/src/libpspp/i18n.c
index e08ba2804bbf4d6b0dbe7c6cf81b820c7a239462..8e99aa04236cb1cf7cd326848b20461f4ceb2e7d 100644 (file)
--- a/src/libpspp/i18n.c
+++ b/src/libpspp/i18n.c
@@ -73,19 +73,22 @@ create_iconv (const char* tocode, const char* fromcode)
   hmapx_insert (&map, converter, hash);
 
   /* I don't think it's safe to translate this string or to use messaging
-     as the convertors have not yet been set up */
+     as the converters have not yet been set up */
   if ( (iconv_t) -1 == converter->conv && 0 != strcmp (tocode, fromcode))
     {
       const int err = errno;
       fprintf (stderr,
                "Warning: "
-               "cannot create a convertor for \"%s\" to \"%s\": %s\n",
+               "cannot create a converter for \"%s\" to \"%s\": %s\n",
                fromcode, tocode, strerror (err));
     }
 
   return converter->conv;
 }
 
+
+/* Similar to recode_string_pool, but allocates the returned value on the heap instead of 
+   in a pool.  It is the caller's responsibility to free the returned value. */
 char *
 recode_string (const char *to, const char *from,
               const char *text, int length)
@@ -94,10 +97,19 @@ recode_string (const char *to, const char *from,
 }
 
 
-/* Return a string based on TEXT which must be encoded using FROM.
-   The returned string will be encoded in TO.
-   If length is not -1, then it must be the number of bytes in TEXT.
-   The returned string must be freed when no longer required.
+/* 
+Converts the string TEXT, which should be encoded in FROM-encoding, to a
+dynamically allocated string in TO-encoding.   Any characters which cannot
+be converted will be represented by '?'.
+
+LENGTH should be the length of the string or -1, if null terminated.
+
+The returned string will be allocated on POOL.
+
+This function's behaviour differs from that of g_convert_with_fallback provided
+by GLib.  The GLib function will fail (returns NULL) if any part of the input
+string is not valid in the declared input encoding.  This function however perseveres
+even in the presence of badly encoded input.
 */
 char *
 recode_string_pool (const char *to, const char *from,