Problem with mixing doctest with gettext _()

[Skip Montanaro]

    Pierre> I tried to define a _() function when testing with the code
    Pierre> below but the doctest still fails.  The following code is at the
    Pierre> end of my utstring.py module
    ...

I suspect it's because your dummy _ is not in builtins.  Why not just call
gettext.install() where you are currently defining _?

Skip