Comment 2 for bug 659107

if there was a --external-format then it would have spared me quite some time when i was setting up our rc.d scripts...

the value of $LANG in rc.d scripts was not obvious. startup script worked when run manually, but fail in remote ways when the server booted (and SBCL used ascii).

i would have just added --external-format to the command line and be done with it. instead of this i had to learn unix voodoo like "sudo localedef -f UTF-8 -i en_US en_US.UTF-8" or "sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales" for an update-safe solution (which i'm not too keen on poisoning my brain with).