Criticism
C standard localization functions are criticized because the localization state is stored globally. This means that in a given program all operations involving a locale can use only one locale at a time. As a result, it is very difficult to implement programs that use more than one locale.
The functions alter the behavior of printf/scanf/strtod which are often used to write saved data to a file or to other programs. The result is that a saved file in one locale will not be readable in another locale, or not be readable at all due to assumptions such as "numbers end at comma characters". Most large-scale software forces the locale to "C" (or another fixed value) to work around these problems.
Another criticism is that these functions do not address at all the far more important problem of translating text to a different language.
Read more about this topic: C Localization Functions
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