Alvaro Herrera wrote:
For example, with all LC_* parameters set to "en_US.UTF8", I get the 
following incorrect "order:by":

Béarn
Bécancour
Beaupré
    

Did you initdb with locale en_US.UTF8, and also createdb with encoding
UTF8?  While you can certainly choose mismatching values in createdb and
initdb, you shouldn't because it doesn't work.
That's an interesting question. Are the LC_* variables set by initdb or createdb? In other words, does their value indicate what initdb settings I used? If I do a default createdb, will the new database automatically be consistent with the cluster's initdb?