What does "_('foo')" mean in Python?

Asked Oct 19 '18 at 18:56

Active Oct 19 '18 at 19:10

Viewed 67 times

I was looking at some python code and saw this:

class ActionListFilter(admin.SimpleListFilter):
    title = _('action')

Is _('action') method of a tuple? Is that a coding "convention"?

Sorry if this a duplicate, but it hard to search for _() in SO or web search engines.

edited Oct 19 '18 at 19:10

asked Oct 19 '18 at 18:56

Red Cricket

1

Here, `_` is a function, probably returning a translation for 'action'. – Thierry Lathuille Oct 19 '18 at 18:57
Where is the function defined? Is it built in? – Red Cricket Oct 19 '18 at 18:58
@user2357112 Uhhh, I'm pretty sure the `_` here is a shorthand for a "translate this text" function. – Aran-Fey Oct 19 '18 at 19:00
@Aran-Fey: Yes, and that's in the duplicate. – user2357112 Oct 19 '18 at 19:00
Eh, I guess it's in *one* of the answers. It's not what the *question* is about though. Not a fan of the dupe, but whatever. – Aran-Fey Oct 19 '18 at 19:01
1

If you're using Django, as I suppose, have a look at [internationalization](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/topics/i18n/translation/) for more info. – Thierry Lathuille Oct 19 '18 at 19:07
1

"Is it a function or a variable?" There is no meaningful difference between functions and values in Python. – Patrick Haugh Oct 19 '18 at 19:10
"Is it a function or a variable?" - functions are stored in variables like any other. – user2357112 Oct 19 '18 at 19:10
2

You can probably see it in the list of imports at the top of your file. One of them will end with `as _`. – Ry- Oct 19 '18 at 19:11
@Ry- Yep there is this at the top of the file `from django.utils.translation import pgettext_lazy, ugettext_lazy as _`. Thanks – Red Cricket Oct 19 '18 at 19:12

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