> >> Both cases indicate the users desire to change a specific locale
> >> setting and thus - of course - all the changes which that implies!
> >> So why should there be a difference?
> > 
> > I don't think it's intentional. I would be +1 on changing to getpreferredencoding(False).
> 
> That won't actually work. If you always use the C library's locale
> setting, most scripts will run in the C locale, and fail to read text
> files properly.

Well, is it any different from today? That's an innocent question: I
don't know if there's a difference between "C locale" and "empty
locale".