 <p>The comment says exactly why it is used: the script needs to parse messages from other commands. If the locale isn't fixed, then the script would have to understand messages in all possible languages, all and possible date and number formats, etc. That's a tall order.</p> <p>So instead of that, they force the locale to "C" and only deal with one translation of those messages, and only deal with one date and number format.</p> <p>(That's still a bit fragile since messages can change from version to version, but a whole lot better than trying to understand all possible languages and all other variations of output formatting.)</p>