Most initialization of locales and facets happens before main() during startup, when the program is likely to only have one thread. By using the new __gnu_cxx::__is_single_threaded() function instead of checking __gthread_active_p() we can avoid using pthread_once or atomics for the common case. That said, I'm not sure why we don't just use a local static variable instead, as __cxa_guard_acquire() already optimizes for the single-threaded case: static const bool init = (_S_initialize_once(), true); I'll revisit that for GCC 12. libstdc++-v3/ChangeLog: * src/c++98/locale.cc (locale::facet::_S_get_c_locale()) (locale::id::_M_id() const): Use __is_single_threaded. * src/c++98/locale_init.cc (locale::_S_initialize()): Likewise. Tested powerpc64le-linux. Committed to trunk.