Debian switching to EGLIBC

The most common reason to sort strings is so that a set can be implemented and identical strings found. It would not matter if the sorting order had nothing to do with english or any language, what does matter is that every program in the world sort the strings in exactly the same way.

You are right that strcmp() does what is wanted. I believe I was remembering some scripting langauges where the string comparison changed depending on the locale, which was a nightmare because people rarely test in other locales.

The printf problem is really a pain and forces me to always force the locale to C at startup. I need to use printf, sometimes hidden inside scripting languages where I can't change it, to write data files that are expected to be readable by the same program even if the locale is different.

strcoll() is approximatly the right idea. Make it perfectly clear that this is some human-oriented sorting function. I think the real solution is to make all such functions take the locale as an argument, rather than using a static variable.