I want to convert a std::string
to lowercase. I am aware of the function tolower()
, however in the past I have had issues with this function and it is hardly ideal anyway as use with a std::string
would require iterating over each character.
Is there an alternative which works 100% of the time?
Adapted from Not So Frequently Asked Questions:
#include <algorithm>
#include <cctype>
#include <string>
std::string data = "Abc";
std::transform(data.begin(), data.end(), data.begin(),
[](unsigned char c){ return std::tolower(c); });
You're really not going to get away without iterating through each character. There's no way to know whether the character is lowercase or uppercase otherwise.
If you really hate tolower()
, here's a specialized ASCII-only alternative that I don't recommend you use:
char asciitolower(char in) {
if (in <= 'Z' && in >= 'A')
return in - ('Z' - 'z');
return in;
}
std::transform(data.begin(), data.end(), data.begin(), asciitolower);
Be aware that tolower()
can only do a per-single-byte-character substitution, which is ill-fitting for many scripts, especially if using a multi-byte-encoding like UTF-8.