id	summary	reporter	owner	description	type	status	component	version	severity	resolution	keywords	cc	stage	has_patch	needs_docs	needs_tests	needs_better_patch	easy	ui_ux
23196	Don't translate empty string as gettext metadata	Ned Batchelder	Iurii Kriachko	"(this is very similar to #11363)

If you pass an empty string to django.utils.translation.ugettext, it returns the metadata from the translations file.  I know that this is the GNU gettext behavior, but honestly, I can't imagine a use for it.

This is a problem when you have a string which can be overridden by a user, but usually is not, and the default value for the string is translated.  If the user enters an empty string, ugettext returns the metadata. Surprise!

Of course, an option is to check the string before calling ugettext, but this is an easy step to overlook, especially because it is conceptually unnecessary.  It would be great if Django's wrappers for gettext would do the obvious thing and return an empty string if asked to translate an empty string.

For a low-level library, it could make sense to get the metadata with gettext(""""), but how would you reasonably use that in Django?  And ffs, why didn't they just make a function to get the metadata if people wanted metadata? :)

"	Cleanup/optimization	closed	Internationalization	dev	Normal	fixed			Accepted	0	0	0	0	0	0