> You still want a sane fallback for all the categories that you are not > explicitly setting. It's harder to type: > > LANG=C LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 env -u LC_ALL foo
or: LANG=C LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 LC_ALL= foo > than it is to type > > LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 foo > > where we know that LANG=C is already set and LC_ALL is already > out-of-the-way. In the big picture, I find the current situation more maintainable and robust: Everyone knows that when specifying a "mixed" locale they need to set all of LC_ALL, LC_<category>, and LANG. Whereas in the world you are depicting, you would be doing half of a mixed locale specification and depending on maint.mk to do the other half. Call it "dependency" or call it "distributed responsibility" - in any case it would require coordination and reduce the freedom of action for the maintainers of maint.mk. In particular, you don't even have a guarantee that LANG=C and LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 fit well together. (It might work on some libcs and fail on others.) With your proposal, we don't have a clear responsibility: it's not clear whether the setting of LANG=C by maint.mk or the setting of LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 is to be changed. Which is why I prefer the current situation, without mixed or intertwined responsibilities. Bruno