The response strings may be specified as a string held within double
quotes or as a series of characters which are specified
in one of six different ways (the following examples all specify the
ASCII character ``A''):
65 - decimal
0101 - octal
0x41 - hexadecimal
'A' - quoted character
'\101' - quoted octal
'\x41' - quoted hexadecimal
or a combination of both methods, for example:
'y' "es"
is identical to:
"yes"
To specify the response strings, the above string definitions must be preceded by the keyword YESSTR= for affirmative responses, and NOSTR= for negative responses.
If a hash character (#) appears in any line, all characters following the hash character are treated as a comment and ignored up to the end of the line, unless the hash is within a quoted string.
The concise format locale table is placed in a file named messages in the current directory. This file should be copied or moved to the correct place in the setlocale file tree (see locale(M)). To prevent accidental corruption of the output data, the file is created with no write permission; if the mestbl utility is run in a directory containing a write-protected messages file, the utility will ask if the existing file should be replaced -- any response other than ``yes'' or ``y'' will cause mestbl to terminate without overwriting the existing file.