>>> import locale
>>> loc = locale.getlocale()  # get current locale
# use German locale; name might vary with platform
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'de_DE')
>>> locale.strcoll('f\xe4n', 'foo')  # compare a string containing an umlaut
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, '')   # use user's preferred locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'C')  # use default (C) locale
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, loc)  # restore saved locale