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Building language packs
In an effort for the php version of gettext to offer similar performance to the extension counterpart, a variant of the MO file is used which is a PHP serialized array written to a file. The original MO file functions basically like a text array. In stead of searching through the MO file for each string to be translated, the original and translated texts are placed into a hash array for quick access and the hash array is serialized for the language pack. At runtime, the hash array is recreated from the export and the strings are quickly accessed from the PHP hash array.
A MO file can be manually compiled using a command-line interface
php include / class.translation.php message.mo> message.mo.php
