Variables in PHP gettext

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How does gettext handle dynamic content?

I'm using PHP's gettext. I want to translate a sentence which has a variable in it. Is this possible?

For example, in English:

Are you sure you want to block Alice?

(Where "Alice" is the user's name.)

But, in German, the subject does not appear at the end of the sentence.

Sind Sie sicher, dass Sie Alice blockieren?

In messages.po, I have

msgid "BLOCK"
msgstr "Are you sure you want to block"

But I see no way to pass one or more variables. Is this possible?

Solution

poedit recognizes the vars.

msgid "Are you sure you want to block %s?"
msgstr "Sind Sie sicher, dass Sie %s blockieren?"

and in PHP

sprintf(_('Are you sure you want to block %s?'),'Alice');

Comments

[Terence Eden]

Well that was easy! Thanks. Have edited to show sprintf. printf just shows the length.

[Luca Rainone]

Sprintf? Why? Printf print the string and sprintf return it. Maybe you write echo sprintf.

[TommyAutoMagically]

@chumkiu - sprintf() is probably used here for reasons that are irrelevant to gettext and localization. (The app itself probably needed to store/manipulate the resulting string, not output it directly to stdout.)

[Thomas Rbt]

Can do do something like this with <?= __('key') ?>?