diff --git a/configure b/configure
index 87b0810b30..3b28ee9227 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -23,6 +23,10 @@
 #
 #############################################################################
 
+# Prevent locale nonsense from breaking basic text processing utils
+LC_ALL=C
+export LC_ALL
+
 # Prefer these macros to full length text !
 # These macros only return an error code - NO display is done
 cc_check() {