.. -*- mode: rst; encoding: utf-8 -*-

======================
Command-Line Interface
======================

Babel includes a command-line interface for working with message catalogs,
similar to the GNU ``xgettext`` program commonly available on Linux/Unix
systems.


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pygettext
=========

When properly installed, Babel provides a script called ``pygettext``, which can
be used to extract localized messages from a variety of files::

    $ pygettext --help
    usage: pygettext [options] dirname1 <dirname2> ...

    options:
      --version             show program's version number and exit
      -h, --help            show this help message and exit
      --charset=CHARSET     charset to use in the output
      -k KEYWORDS, --keyword=KEYWORDS
                            keywords to look for in addition to the defaults. You
                            can specify multiple -k flags on the command line.
      --no-location         do not include location comments with filename and
                            line number
      --omit-header         do not include msgid "" entry in header
      -o OUTPUT, --output=OUTPUT
                            path to the output POT file