# pogrep

The pogrep tool extracts messages that match a regular expression into a new set of PO files that can be examined, edited and corrected. These corrections can then be merged using pomerge.

## Usage

    pogrep [options] <in> <out>

Where:

<in>/<out> | In and out are either directories or files. Out will contain PO/XLIFF files with only those messages that match the regular expression that was you searched for.

Options:

`--version` | show program’s version number and exit
`-h, --help` | show this help message and exit
`--manpage` | output a manpage based on the help
`--progress=PROGRESS`
| show progress as: dots, none, bar, names, verbose
`--errorlevel=ERRORLEVEL`
| show errorlevel as: none, message, exception, traceback
`-iINPUT, --input=INPUT`
| read from INPUT in po, pot, xlf formats (XLIFF since version 1.0)
`-xEXCLUDE, --exclude=EXCLUDE`
| exclude names matching EXCLUDE from input paths
`-oOUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT`
| write to OUTPUT in po, pot, xlf formats (XLIFF since version 1.0)
`--search=SEARCHPARTS`
| searches the given parts (source, target, notes, locations)
`-I, --ignore-case`
| ignore case distinctions
`-e, --regexp` | use regular expression matching
`-v, --invert-match`
| select non-matching lines
`--accelerator=ACCELERATORS`
| ignores the given accelerator characters when matching
`-k, --keep-translations`
| always extract units with translations

## Example

    pogrep --accelerator="_" --search msgid -I -e "software|hardware" only-zu only-zu-check

Search for the words “software” or “hardware” in the msgid field. Ignore case (`-I`) and treat the underscore (_) character as an accelerator key. Search through all PO files in the directory “only-zu” and place any matches in PO files in the directory “only-zu-check”. This would be useful to run if you know that the word for software and hardware has been changed during the course of translation and you want to check and correct all these instances.

    pogrep --search=msgid -e '^\w+(\s+\w+){0,3}$' -i templates -o short-words

Find all messages in the templates directory that have between 1 and 4 words and place them in short-words. Use this if you want to see quick results by translating messages that are most likely menu entries or dialogue labels.

    pogrep --search=msgstr -I -e "Ifayile" zu zu-check

Search all translations for the occurrence of Ifayile. You would use this to check if words have been used correctly. Useful if you find problematic use of the same word for different concepts. You can use pocompendium to find these conflicts.

## Notes

### Unicode normalization

pogrep will normalize Unicode strings. This allows you to search for strings that contain the same character but that are using precomposed Unicode characters or which are composed using another composition recipe. While an individual user will in all likelihood only compose characters in one way, normalization ensures that data created in a team setting can be shared.

## Further reading

Here is a blog post explaining how pogrep can be used to do more targeted localisation of GNOME: http://translate.org.za/blogs/friedel/en/content/better-lies-about-gnome-localisation