le 'C' locale. Calling setlocale(LC_ALL, "") lets it use the default locale as defined by the LANG variable. Since we don't want to interfere with the current locale setting we thus emulate the behavior in the way described above. To maintain compatibility with other platforms, not only the LANG variable is tested, but a list of variables given as envvars parameter. The first found to be defined will be used. envvars defaults to the search path used in GNU gettext; it must always contain the variable name 'LANG'. Except for the code 'C', the language code corresponds to RFC 1766. code and encoding can be None in case the values cannot be determined. r