Converting a string to lower-case (without built-in to-lower functions!)

Question

The goal of this code-golf is to create a code that lets the user input an ASCII string (contains only printable ASCII characters), and your program outputs the lower-case variant of this string.

Important: you are NOT allowed to use a built-in function that converts the string (or just one character) to lowercase (such as ToLower() in .NET, strtolower() in PHP , ...)! You're allowed to use all other built-in functions, however.

Another important note: The input string doesn't contain only uppercase characters. The input string is a mix of uppercase characters, lowercase characters, numbers and other ASCII printable characters.

Good luck!

Answer 1

Python 2.7 - 30 (with terrible and unapologetic rule abuse)

raw_input().upper().swapcase()

As an anonymous edit pointed out, you can do it in 27 26 in Python 3:

input().upper().swapcase()

I'm flagrantly abusing the rules here, but...

Important: you are NOT allowed to use a built-in function that converts the string (or just one character) to lowercase (such as ToLower() in .NET, strtolower() in PHP , ...)! You're allowed to use all other built-in functions, however.

This takes the strings and coverts it to upper case. Then in a very unrelated method call, it reverses the case of the string - so that any lower case letters become upper case letters... and swaps any upper case letters to lower case letters.

Answer 2

Perl - 11 10 characters.

y/A-Z/a-z/

y/// is same as tr///!

In action:

% perl -pe 'y/A-Z/a-z/' <<< 'Hello @ WORLD !'
hello @ world !

Answer 3

Shell - 10

Translation of @Gowtham's Perl solution using /bin/tr.

tr A-Z a-z

Sample run:

% tr A-Z a-z <<<'Hello WORLD! @'
hello world! @

Answer 4

Befunge-98 - 26 22 21 19

~:''-d2*/1-!' *+,#@

Relies on the fact that (c-39)/26 is 1 only for character codes of uppercase ASCII characters (assuming integer division). For each character c, print out c + (((c-39)/26)==1)*' '.

Sample session:

% cfunge lower.b98
hello WORLD!
hello world!
This is a TEST!!11 az AZ @[`{
this is a test!!11 az az @[`{

Answer 5

Python 3, 48

input().translate({c:c|32for c in range(65,91)})

Answer 6

Ruby, 18 characters

Nothing really interesting.

gets.tr'A-Z','a-z'

(run in IRB)

Just for fun: a confusing version:

$,=$* *' ';$;=$,.tr'A-Z','a-z';$><<$;

Run like this:

c:\a\ruby>lowercase.rb Llamas are AMAZING!

Output

llamas are amazing!

Answer 7

J - 30

'@Z'(]+32*1=I.)&.(a.&i.)1!:1]1

J is read right-to-left, so to break this down:

1. Prompt user for input: 1!:1]1
2. Perform algorithm in code-point-space: &.(a.&i.)
3. Identify character range for each letter; the characters between codepoints "@" and "Z" are considered uppercase: 1=I..
4. For each uppercase codepoint, add 32: ]+32* ...
5. Note that step (2) creates an implicit step (5): we started out by projecting from character to integer domain, so now that we're finished, we map those integers back onto characters.

Obviously this particular implementation only considers ASCII; but the approach could be extended to at least the basic multilingual plane in Unicode.

Answer 8

C 64 63 59 55 chars

main(c){while(c=getchar(),~c)putchar(c-65u<27?c+32:c);}

Answer 9

Golfscript - 17

Program:

{..64>\91<*32*+}%

Explanation:

1. {}% maps the code inside to every character in string.
2. .. copies the top of the stack (the character) twice.
3. 64> 1 if character code is greater than 64, else 0.
4. \ swaps the two items on the stack (gets the second copy of the letter, and stores the result of 64> in position two).
5. 91< checks to see if character code is less than 91. Similar to step 3.
6. * multiplies the results from steps 3 and 5 together. Only equal to 1, if both steps were true.
7. 32* multiplies the result of step 6 with 32. Will be 32 if step 6 was 1, else 0.
8. + add the result (either 32 or 0) onto the character code.

Example output:

echo HelLO @ WorLD | ruby golfscript.rb upper_to_lower.gs
hello @ world

Answer 10

05AB1E, 3 bytes

u.š

Port of @user8777 Python 3 answer.

Try it online.

Explanation:

u    # Convert the (implicit) input to uppercase
 .š  # Switch the case (upper to lower and vice-versa)
     # (and output the result implicitly)

---

But without any case-altering builtins:

05AB1E, 12 11 6 bytes

žn2ä`‡

-1 byte thanks to @Emigna.
-5 bytes thanks to @TheThonnu

Try it online.

Explanation:

žn      # Push builtin string "ABC...XYZabc...xyz"
  2ä    # Split it into two equal-sized parts: ["ABC...XYZ", "abc...xyz"]
    `   # Pop and push the strings separately to the stack
     ‡  # Transliterate all uppercase letters to lowercase ones
        # (after which the result is output implicitly)

Answer 11

Perl: 24 characters

s/[A-Z]/chr 32+ord$&/ge

Sample run:

bash-4.1$ perl -pe 's/[A-Z]/chr 32+ord$&/ge' <<< 'Hello @ WORLD !'
hello @ world !

Answer 12

DELPHI

const
  UpChars:set of AnsiChar = ['A'..'Z'];
var
  I: Integer;
begin
  SetLength(Result, Length(pString));
  for I := 1 to length(pstring) do
    Result[i] := AnsiChar((Integer(pString[i] in UpChars))*(Ord(pString[i])+32));
  WriteLn(Result);
end;

Answer 13

JavaScript - 109 104 (ES6: 95)

Thanks to some for the corrected version.

a=prompt();for(b=[i=0];c=a.charCodeAt(i);)b[i++]=String.fromCharCode(c|(c>64&c<91)*32);alert(b.join(""))

The following works if the browser supports ES6 function expressions:

alert(prompt().split("").map(c=>String.fromCharCode(c.charCodeAt()|(c>"@"&c<"[")*32)).join(""))

Answer 14

Perl 18

s/[A-Z]/$&|" "/eg

Something like:

perl -pe 's/[A-Z]/$&|" "/eg'  <<<'are NOT allowed to: ToLower() in .NET, strtolower() in PHP'
are not allowed to: tolower() in .net, strtolower() in php

and

perl -pe 's/[A-Z]/$&|" "/eg' <<< "The input string Doesn't cOntaIn...( C0D3-@01F. ;-)"
the input string doesn't contain...( c0d3-@01f. ;-)

For @FireFly :

perl -pe 's/[A-Z]/$&|" "/eg' <<< "Doesn't this translate @ to \` and [\]^_ to {|}~DEL? "
doesn't ... @ to ` and [\]^_ to {|}~del? 

no.

More generic: 18 chars anyway:

s/[A-Z]/$&|" "/eg

s/[A-Z]/$&^" "/eg

This wont change anything in state:

perl -pe 's/[A-Z]/$&^" "/eg' <<< "Doesn't ... @ to \` and [\]^_ to {|}~DEL? "
doesn't ... @ to ` and [\]^_ to {|}~del? 

All work fine, but the advantage of changing | (or) by ^ (xor) is that the same syntax could be used for toLower, toUpper or swapCase:

toUpper:

perl -pe 's/[a-z]/$&^" "/eg' <<< "Doesn't ... @ to \` and [\]^_ to {|}~DEL? "
DOESN'T ... @ TO ` AND [\]^_ TO {|}~DEL? 

and swapCase (18+1 = 19 chars):

perl -pe 's/[a-z]/$&^" "/egi' <<< "Doesn't ... @ to \` and [\]^_ to {|}~DEL? "
dOESN'T ... @ TO ` AND [\]^_ TO {|}~del? 

Answer 15

javascript 80

"X".replace(/[A-Z]/g,function($){return String.fromCharCode($.charCodeAt()+32)})

(76 if you remove "X")

with prompt and alert - 92

alert(prompt().replace(/[A-Z]/g,function($){return String.fromCharCode($.charCodeAt()+32)}))

fiddle

thanks to @FireFly @some @C5H8NNaO4 and @minitech

Answer 16

K (ngn/k), 19 17 bytes

{`c$x+32*~"A["'x}

Try it online!

Avoids using the floor builtin (_:).

• ~"A["' generate a bit mask with 1's in the positions in the input containing uppercase letters
• 32* multiply by 32, which calculates the offsets between uppercase and lowercase ASCII character codes
• x+ add the offsets to the input (converting the string input to integers)
• `c$ convert back to characters

Answer 17

x86-16 machine code, 15 bytes

Assembled:

ac3c 417c 063c 5a7f 020c 20aa e2f2 c3

Unassembled listing:

       _LOOP:
 AC         LODSB            ; load byte from [SI] into AL, advance SI 
 3C 41      CMP  AL, 'A'     ; is char less than 'A'? 
 7C 06      JL   _STORE      ; if so, do not convert 
 3C 5A      CMP  AL, 'Z'     ; is char greater than 'Z'? 
 7F 02      JG   _STORE      ; if so, do not convert 
 0C 20      OR   AL, 'a'-'A' ; lowercase the char 
       _STORE:
 AA         STOSB            ; store char to [DI], advance DI 
 E2 F2      LOOP _LOOP       ; continue loop through string 
 C3         RET              ; return to caller

Callable near function. Input string in DS:[SI], length in CX. Output string in ES:[DI].

Output from PC DOS test program:

Answer 18

R

71 characters:

chartr(paste(LETTERS,collapse=""),paste(letters,collapse=""),scan(,""))

83 characters:

a=as.integer(charToRaw(scan(,"")))
b=a%in%(65:90)
a[b]=a[b]+32
rawToChar(as.raw(a))

Answer 19

Q, 18

.....

{x^ssr/[x]..Q`a`A}

Answer 20

Q (16)

.......

{x^(.Q.A!.Q.a)x}

Answer 21

Python (33)

If in doubt, use the shell.

import os;os.system('tr A-Z a-z')

Regrettably, this is still longer than Lego's solution.

Answer 22

PHP (42)

Run from the command line:

-R'echo@str_ireplace($a=range(a,z),$a,$argn);'

-R and the single quotes are not counted.

Answer 23

PowerShell: 69 65 64

I've tried a half-dozen ways to get Replace to work the way I want it to without using the long [regex]::Replace syntax, but I haven't had any luck. If anyone else has an idea of what might work, please do suggest it.

Golfed code:

[regex]::Replace((read-host),"[A-Z]",{[char](32+[char]"$args")})

Changes from original:

• Rearranged last argument so that [int] is no longer needed, per suggestion in comments.

Explanation:

(read-host) gets the user input.

[regex]::Replace(...) tells PowerShell to use RegEx matching to perform replacement operations on a string.

"[A-Z]" matches all uppercase letters.

{...} tells PowerShell to use a script to determine the replacement value.

[char]"$args" takes the current match and types it as an ASCII character.

32+ converts the character to an integer, representing the ASCII code, and increases the value by 32 - which would match ASCII code of the corresponding lowercase letter.

[char](...) takes the resulting value and converts it back to an ASCII character.

Demo of original:

(Current version tested - screenshot not yet posted.)

Answer 24

k2, 15 bytes

I am super late to this one, but I found this cool anyway.

{_ci 32+_ic x}'

Also:

Pyth, 10 bytes

Doesn't really count because Pyth was created after this was posted. Still cool.

jkmC+32Cdw

Answer 25

PowerShell, 53 49 43 bytes

-4 bytes thanks @AdmBorkBork

-6 bytes thanks @Veskah

-join($args|%{[char](32*($_-in65..90)+$_)})

Try it online!

Answer 26

Vim, 6 bytes

gUUg~~

Or, if allowed,

Vim, 3 bytes

guu

Answer 27

Just for fun, because Java's my language.

Java - 162 175

Fixed for OP's updates.

class a{public static void main(String[]a){String b="";for(char c:new java.util.Scanner(
System.in).nextLine().toCharArray())b+=c>64&&c<91?(char)(c+32):c;System.out.print(b);}}

With line breaks and tabs

class a{

    public static void main(String[]a){
        String b="";
        for(char c:new java.util.Scanner(System.in).nextLine().toCharArray())b+=c>64&&c<91?(char)(c+32):c;
        System.out.print(b);
    }

}

Answer 28

Javascript, 105

prompt().split("").map(function(a){c=a.charCodeAt(0);return String.fromCharCode(c|(c-64?32:0))}).join("")

_{Actually ther was no output form specified, so run it in console Yea, JavaScript really is verbose with charcode <-> string}

Answer 29

Ruby: 66

def l(s)s.bytes.map{|b|(65..90).include?(b)?b+32:b}.pack('c*');end

Answer 30

C# - 108

class P{static void Main(string[]a){foreach(var c in a[0])System.Console.Write(
(char)(c>64&&c<91?c+32:c));}}

About 70 for just the method body.

Add 5 chars to include a LF/CR in the output:

class P{static void Main(string[]a){foreach(var c in a[0]+"\n")System.Console.Write(
(char)(c>64&&c<91?c+32:c));}}

A LINQ version would be shorter:

class P{static void Main(string[]a){a[0].Any(c=>System.Console.Write(
(char)(c>64&&c<91?32+c:c))is P);}}

(103) .. except that it requires using System.Linq; (total: 121).