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| 3 | <!-- Copyright (C) 2022 Richard Stallman and Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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| 5 | (The work of Trevis Rothwell and Nelson Beebe has been assigned or
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| 6 | licensed to the FSF.)
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| 8 | Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
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| 20 | <head>
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| 21 | <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
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| 22 | <title>English (GNU C Language Manual)</title>
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| 23 |
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| 24 | <meta name="description" content="English (GNU C Language Manual)">
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| 25 | <meta name="keywords" content="English (GNU C Language Manual)">
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| 29 | <link href="index.html" rel="start" title="Top">
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| 30 | <link href="Symbol-Index.html" rel="index" title="Symbol Index">
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| 31 | <link href="index.html#SEC_Contents" rel="contents" title="Table of Contents">
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| 32 | <link href="Lexical-Syntax.html" rel="up" title="Lexical Syntax">
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| 33 | <link href="Characters.html" rel="next" title="Characters">
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| 34 | <link href="Lexical-Syntax.html" rel="prev" title="Lexical Syntax">
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| 54 |
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| 55 | </head>
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| 56 |
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| 57 | <body lang="en">
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| 58 | <span id="English"></span><div class="header">
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| 59 | <p>
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| 60 | Next: <a href="Characters.html" accesskey="n" rel="next">Characters</a>, Up: <a href="Lexical-Syntax.html" accesskey="u" rel="up">Lexical Syntax</a> [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Symbol-Index.html" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
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| 61 | </div>
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| 62 | <hr>
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| 63 | <span id="Write-Programs-in-English_0021"></span><h3 class="section">5.1 Write Programs in English!</h3>
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| 64 |
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| 65 | <p>In principle, you can write the function and variable names in a
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| 66 | program, and the comments, in any human language. C allows any kinds
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| 67 | of characters in comments, and you can put non-ASCII characters into
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| 68 | identifiers with a special prefix. However, to enable programmers in
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| 69 | all countries to understand and develop the program, it is best given
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| 70 | today’s circumstances to write identifiers and comments in
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| 71 | English.
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| 72 | </p>
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| 73 | <p>English is the one language that programmers in all countries
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| 74 | generally study. If a program’s names are in English, most
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| 75 | programmers in Bangladesh, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, and Bulgaria can
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| 76 | understand them. Most programmers in those countries can speak
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| 77 | English, or at least read it, but they do not read each other’s
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| 78 | languages at all. In India, with so many languages, two programmers
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| 79 | may have no common language other than English.
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| 80 | </p>
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| 81 | <p>If you don’t feel confident in writing English, do the best you can,
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| 82 | and follow each English comment with a version in a language you
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| 83 | write better; add a note asking others to translate that to English.
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| 84 | Someone will eventually do that.
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| 85 | </p>
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| 86 | <p>The program’s user interface is a different matter. We don’t need to
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| 87 | choose one language for that; it is easy to support multiple languages
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| 88 | and let each user choose the language to use. This requires writing
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| 89 | the program to support localization of its interface. (The
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| 90 | <code>gettext</code> package exists to support this; see <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_node/Message-Translation.html#Message-Translation">The GNU C Library</a> in <cite>The GNU C Library Reference
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| 91 | Manual</cite>.) Then a community-based translation effort can provide
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| 92 | support for all the languages users want to use.
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| 93 | </p>
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| 94 |
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| 95 |
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| 96 |
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| 97 | </body>
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| 98 | </html>
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