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: 
If it requires a specific locale, specify
=========================================

I think this is the best solution. For example, if the code requires a locale of `en_US.UTF-8` then you must specify in the answer. This is similar to how we specify encodings if it requires a specific encoding, e.g. Windows-1252.
Add byte count of locale
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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.