islower

C

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Technical Specifications

Strings library

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Functions
Character manipulation
isalnum isalpha islower isupper isdigit isxdigit isblank (C99)	iscntrl isgraph isspace isprint ispunct tolower toupper
Conversions to numeric formats
atof atoiatolatoll (C99) strtolstrtoll (C99)	strtoulstrtoull (C99) strtofstrtodstrtold (C99)(C99) strtoimaxstrtoumax (C99)(C99)
String manipulation
strcpystrcpy_s (C11)
strncpystrncpy_s (C11)
strcatstrcat_s (C11)
strncatstrncat_s (C11)
strxfrm
String examination
strlenstrnlen_s (C11) strcmp strncmp strcoll strchr strrchr	strspn strcspn strpbrk strstr strtokstrtok_s (C11)
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memchr
memcmp
memsetmemset_s (C11)
memcpymemcpy_s (C11)
memmovememmove_s (C11)
Miscellaneous
strerrorstrerror_sstrerrorlen_s (C11)(C11)

Defined in header <ctype.h>
int islower( int ch );

Checks if the given character is classified as a lowercase character according to the current C locale. In the default "C" locale, islower returns true only for the lowercase letters (abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz).

If islower returns true, it is guaranteed that iscntrl, isdigit, ispunct, and isspace return false for the same character in the same C locale.

The behavior is undefined if the value of ch is not representable as unsigned char and is not equal to EOF.

Parameters

ch

-

character to classify

Return value

Non-zero value if the character is a lowercase letter, zero otherwise.

Example

Run this code

#include <stdio.h>
#include <ctype.h>
#include <locale.h>

int main(void)
{
    unsigned char c = '\xe5'; // letter  in ISO-8859-1
    printf("In the default C locale, \\xe5 is%slowercase\n",
           islower(c) ? "" : "not " );
    setlocale(LC_ALL, "en_GB.iso88591");
    printf("In ISO-8859-1 locale, \\xe5 is%slowercase\n",
           islower(c) ? "" : "not " );
}

Output:

In the default C locale, \xe5 is not lowercase
In ISO-8859-1 locale, \xe5 is lowercase

References

• C11 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:2011):

• 7.4.1.7 The islower function (p: 202)

• C99 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1999):

• 7.4.1.7 The islower function (p: 183)

• C89/C90 standard (ISO/IEC 9899:1990):

• 4.3.1.6 The islower function

See also

iswlower (C95)

checks if a wide character is an lowercase character (function)

ASCII values			characters	iscntrl iswcntrl	isprint iswprint	isspace iswspace	isblank iswblank	isgraph iswgraph	ispunct iswpunct	isalnum iswalnum	isalpha iswalpha	isupper iswupper	islower iswlower	isdigit iswdigit	isxdigit iswxdigit
decimal	hexadecimal	octal
08	\x0\x8	\0\10	control codes (NUL, etc.)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9	\x9	\11	tab (\t)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1013	\xA\xD	\12\15	whitespaces (\n, \v, \f, \r)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
1431	\xE\x1F	\16\37	control codes	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
32	\x20	\40	space	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
3347	\x21\x2F	\41\57	!"#$%&'()*+,-./	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
4857	\x30\x39	\60\71	0123456789	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
5864	\x3A\x40	\72\100	:;<=>?@	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
6570	\x41\x46	\101\106	ABCDEF	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
7190	\x47\x5A	\107\132	GHIJKLMNOP QRSTUVWXYZ	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
9196	\x5B\x60	\133\140	[\]^_`	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
97102	\x61\x66	\141\146	abcdef	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
103122	\x67\x7A	\147\172	ghijklmnop qrstuvwxyz	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
123126	\x7B\x7E	\172\176	{|}~	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
127	\x7F	\177	backspace character (DEL)	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0