

          catopen [-fail|-nofail] catname
               Open the message catalog catname.  This may be a
               relative path name, in which case the NLSPATH
               environment variable is searched to find an absolute
               path to the message catalog.  A handle in the form
               msgcatN is returned.  Normally, errors are ignored, and
               in the case of a failed call to catopen, a handle is
               returned to an unopened message catalog.  (This handle
               may still be passed to catgets and catclose, causing
               catgets to simply return the default string, as
               described above.  If the -fail option is specified, an
               error is returned if the open fails.  The option
               -nofail specifies the default behavior of not returning
               an error when catopen fails to open a specified message
               catalog.
