How to convert an instance of std::string to lower case

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.

Boost provides a string algorithm for this:

#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>

std::string str = "HELLO, WORLD!";
boost::algorithm::to_lower(str); // modifies str

Or, for non-in-place:

#include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp>

const std::string str = "HELLO, WORLD!";
const std::string lower_str = boost::algorithm::to_lower_copy(str);

My own template functions which performs upper / lower case.

#include <string>
#include <algorithm>

//
//  Lowercases string
//
template <typename T>
std::basic_string<T> lowercase(const std::basic_string<T>& s)
{
    std::basic_string<T> s2 = s;
    std::transform(s2.begin(), s2.end(), s2.begin(), tolower);
    return s2;
}

//
// Uppercases string
//
template <typename T>
std::basic_string<T> uppercase(const std::basic_string<T>& s)
{
    std::basic_string<T> s2 = s;
    std::transform(s2.begin(), s2.end(), s2.begin(), toupper);
    return s2;
}

I wrote this simple helper function:

#include <locale> // tolower

string to_lower(string s) {        
    for(char &c : s)
        c = tolower(c);
    return s;
}

Usage:

string s = "TEST";
cout << to_lower("HELLO WORLD"); // output: "hello word"
cout << to_lower(s); // won't change the original variable.

Since none of the answers mentioned the upcoming Ranges library, which is available in the standard library since C++20, and currently separately available on GitHub as range-v3, I would like to add a way to perform this conversion using it.

To modify the string in-place:

str |= action::transform([](unsigned char c){ return std::tolower(c); });

To generate a new string:

auto new_string = original_string
    | view::transform([](unsigned char c){ return std::tolower(c); });

(Don't forget to #include <cctype> and the required Ranges headers.)

Note: the use of unsigned char as the argument to the lambda is inspired by cppreference, which states:

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

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 signed char. Instead, convert the value to unsigned char 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;
}

Is there an alternative which works 100% of the time?

No

There are several questions you need to ask yourself before choosing a lowercasing method.

1. How is the string encoded? plain ASCII? UTF-8? some form of extended ASCII legacy encoding?
2. What do you mean by lower case anyway? Case mapping rules vary between languages! Do you want something that is localised to the users locale? do you want something that behaves consistently on all systems your software runs on? Do you just want to lowercase ASCII characters and pass through everything else?
3. What libraries are available?

Once you have answers to those questions you can start looking for a soloution that fits your needs. There is no one size fits all that works for everyone everywhere!

C++ doesn't have tolower or toupper methods implemented for std::string, but it is available for char. One can easily read each char of string, convert it into required case and put it back into string. A sample code without using any third party library:

#include<iostream>

int main(){
    std::string str = std::string("How IS The Josh");
    for(char &ch : str){
        ch = std::tolower(ch);
    }
    std::cout<<str<<std::endl;
    return 0;
}

For character based operation on string : For every character in string

Try this function :)

string toLowerCase(string str) {

    int str_len = str.length();

    string final_str = "";

    for(int i=0; i<str_len; i++) {

        char character = str[i];

        if(character>=65 && character<=92) {

            final_str += (character+32);

        } else {

            final_str += character;

        }

    }

    return final_str;

}

Have a look at the excellent c++17 cpp-unicodelib (GitHub). It's single-file and header-only.

#include <exception>
#include <iostream>
#include <codecvt>

// cpp-unicodelib, downloaded from GitHub
#include "unicodelib.h"
#include "unicodelib_encodings.h"

using namespace std;
using namespace unicode;

// converter that allows displaying a Unicode32 string
wstring_convert<codecvt_utf8<char32_t>, char32_t> converter;

std::u32string  in = U"Je suis là!";
cout << converter.to_bytes(in) << endl;

std::u32string  lc = to_lowercase(in);
cout << converter.to_bytes(lc) << endl;

Output

Je suis là!
je suis là!

use this code to change case of string in c++.

#include<bits/stdc++.h>

using namespace std;

int main(){
  string a = "sssAAAAAAaaaaDas";
  transform(a.begin(),a.end(),a.begin(),::tolower);
  cout<<a;
}

Google's absl library has absl::AsciiStrToLower / absl::AsciiStrToUpper

Add some optional libraries for ASCII string to_lower, both of which are production level and with micro-optimizations, which is expected to be faster than the existed answers here(TODO: add benchmark result).

Facebook's Folly:

void toLowerAscii(char* str, size_t length)

Google's Abseil:

void AsciiStrToLower(std::string* s);

I wrote a templated version that works with any string :

#include <type_traits> // std::decay
#include <ctype.h>    // std::toupper & std::tolower


template <class T = void> struct farg_t { using type = T; };
template <template<typename ...> class T1, 
class T2> struct farg_t <T1<T2>> { using type = T2*; };
//---------------

template<class T, class T2 = 
typename std::decay< typename farg_t<T>::type >::type>
void ToUpper(T& str) { T2 t = &str[0]; 
for (; *t; ++t) *t = std::toupper(*t); }


template<class T, class T2 = typename std::decay< typename 
farg_t<T>::type >::type>
void Tolower(T& str) { T2 t = &str[0]; 
for (; *t; ++t) *t = std::tolower(*t); }

Tested with gcc compiler:

#include <iostream>
#include "upove_code.h"

int main()
{

    std::string str1 = "hEllo ";
    char str2 [] = "wOrld";

    ToUpper(str1);
    ToUpper(str2);
    std::cout << str1 << str2 << '\n'; 
    Tolower(str1);
    Tolower(str2);
    std::cout << str1 << str2 << '\n'; 
    return 0;
}

output:

>HELLO WORLD
>
>hello world

This could be another simple version to convert uppercase to lowercase and vice versa. I used VS2017 community version to compile this source code.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    std::string _input = "lowercasetouppercase";
#if 0
    // My idea is to use the ascii value to convert
    char upperA = 'A';
    char lowerA = 'a';

    cout << (int)upperA << endl; // ASCII value of 'A' -> 65
    cout << (int)lowerA << endl; // ASCII value of 'a' -> 97
    // 97-65 = 32; // Difference of ASCII value of upper and lower a
#endif // 0

    cout << "Input String = " << _input.c_str() << endl;
    for (int i = 0; i < _input.length(); ++i)
    {
        _input[i] -= 32; // To convert lower to upper
#if 0
        _input[i] += 32; // To convert upper to lower
#endif // 0
    }
    cout << "Output String = " << _input.c_str() << endl;

    return 0;
}

Note: if there are special characters then need to be handled using condition check.