std::tolower

C++

Language

Headers

Freestanding and hosted implementations

Named requirements

Language support library

Concepts library (C++20)

Diagnostics library

Utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Algorithms library

Iterators library

Numerics library

Input/output library

Localizations library

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Atomic operations library (C++11)

Thread support library (C++11)

Filesystem library (C++17)

Technical Specifications

Strings library

Null-terminated strings

Byte strings

Multibyte strings

Wide strings

Classes

basic_string

basic_string_view (C++17)

char_traits

Null-terminated byte strings

Functions
Character manipulation
isalnum isalpha islower isupper isdigit isxdigit isblank (C++11)	iscntrl isgraph isspace isprint ispunct tolower toupper
Conversions to numeric formats
atof atoiatolatoll (C++11) strtolstrtoll (C++11)	strtoulstrtoull (C++11) strtofstrtodstrtold (C++11)(C++11) strtoimaxstrtouimax (C++11)(C++11)
String manipulation
strcpy
strncpy
strcat
strncat
strxfrm
String examination
strlen strcmp strncmp strcoll strchr strrchr	strspn strcspn strpbrk strstr strtok
Memory manipulation
memchr
memcmp
memset
memcpy
memmove
Miscellaneous
strerror

Defined in header <cctype>
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

ch

-

character to be converted. If the value of ch is not representable as unsigned char and does not equal EOF, the behavior is undefined

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 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;
}

Example

Run this code

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

int main()
{
    unsigned char c = '\xb4'; // the character  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';
}

Output:

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

See also

toupper	converts a character to uppercase (function)
tolower(std::locale)	converts a character to lowercase using the ctype facet of a locale (function template)
towlower	converts a wide character to lowercase (function)