Question: Triggered by [this comment](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/60733/count-the-bytes-of-a-program/60740?noredirect=1#comment166202_60740).

Some [code-golf](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-golf "show questions tagged 'code-golf'") answers assume a specific locale. For example [this answer](https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/60740/11259) assumes a locale of `en_US.UTF-8`. If the default locale on a given system uses a different encoding, then the answer becomes invalid. In order to make it valid, extra code to set the LC environment variables needs to be added with the effect of increasing the CG score.

@FUZxxl and I [had an interesting discussion on this](http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/33758). I think we'd both like to see a community consensus on this one.

Answer: 
No need to specify locale
-------------------------

I think this is splitting hairs. If you test a submission and it doesn't work due to locale settings, try English UTF-8. If that doesn't work, ask the poster of the submission.

If the submission *requires* a certain locale, the poster should mention this as a courtesy to those who wish to test the submission. However, there should be no penalty for this.
Add byte count of locale
------------------------

Answers that depend on locale in any way except for the `C` locale must add to their score the length of the locale name (e.g. `en_US.UTF-8` counts as 11 characters). This is similar to how perl answers add one character if the `-e` flag is passed to the interpreter.