std::tolower

int tolower( int ch );

Converts the given character to lowercase according to the character conversion rules defined by the currently installed C locale.

In the default "C" locale, the following uppercase letters ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ are replaced with respective lowercase letters abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.

Parameters

Return value

Lowercase version of ch or unmodified ch if no lowercase version is listed in the current C locale.

Notes

Like all other functions from <cctype>, the behavior of std::tolower is undefined if the argument's value is neither representable as unsignedchar nor equal to EOF. To use these functions safely with plain chars (or signedchars), the argument should first be converted to unsignedchar:

char my_tolower(char ch)
{
    return static_cast<char>(std::tolower(static_cast<unsigned char>(ch)));
}

Similarly, they should not be directly used with standard algorithms when the iterator's value type is char or signedchar. Instead, convert the value to unsignedchar first:

std::string str_tolower(std::string s)
{
    std::transform(s.begin(), s.end(), s.begin(),
                // static_cast<int(*)(int)>(std::tolower)         // wrong
                // [](int c){ return std::tolower(c); }           // wrong
                // [](char c){ return std::tolower(c); }          // wrong
                   [](unsigned char c){ return std::tolower(c); } // correct
                  );
    return s;
}

Example

#include <cctype>
#include <clocale>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    unsigned char c = '\xb4'; // the character Ž in ISO-8859-15
                              // but ´ (acute accent) in ISO-8859-1

    std::setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.iso88591");
    std::cout << std::hex << std::showbase;
    std::cout << "in iso8859-1, tolower('0xb4') gives " << std::tolower(c) << '\n';
    std::setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_US.iso885915");
    std::cout << "in iso8859-15, tolower('0xb4') gives " << std::tolower(c) << '\n';
}

in iso8859-1, tolower('0xb4') gives 0xb4
in iso8859-15, tolower('0xb4') gives 0xb8

See also

External links