diff --git a/Lib/test/test_re.py b/Lib/test/test_re.py
index a195320..92d2c13 100644
--- a/Lib/test/test_re.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_re.py
@@ -1400,8 +1400,6 @@
     def test_locale_flag(self):
         import locale
         enc = locale.getpreferredencoding(False)
-        bletter = None
-        bpat = b'A'
         # Search non-ASCII letter
         for i in range(128, 256):
             try:
@@ -1415,6 +1413,9 @@
                 break
             except (UnicodeError, TypeError):
                 pass
+        else:
+            bletter = None
+            bpat = b'A'
         # Bytes patterns
         pat = re.compile(bpat, re.LOCALE | re.IGNORECASE)
         if bletter: