How do I lowercase a string in Python?

Question

Is there a way to convert a string to lowercase?

"Kilometers" → "kilometers"

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_{See How to change a string into uppercase? for the opposite.}

Answer 1

Use str.lower():

"Kilometer".lower()

• Ekrem Dinçel: This only works well with ASCII characters, you may want to use str.maketrans and str.translate if you are not getting the expected string.
• lolesque: Not only ASCII, it works for many diacritics, for example ÀÇÐÊĞİŃÓŒŘŠŤÚŻ but there is a problem for dotless i "ı".upper().lower() becomes i, while upper dotted İ is conserved thanks to a Combining dot above (0x307).
• cowlinator: .casefold() handles more complex unicode comparisons. Available in python 3.3+.

Answer 2

The canonical Pythonic way of doing this is

>>> 'Kilometers'.lower()
'kilometers'

However, if the purpose is to do case insensitive matching, you should use case-folding:

>>> 'Kilometers'.casefold()
'kilometers'

Here's why:

>>> "Maße".casefold()
'masse'
>>> "Maße".lower()
'maße'
>>> "MASSE" == "Maße"
False
>>> "MASSE".lower() == "Maße".lower()
False
>>> "MASSE".casefold() == "Maße".casefold()
True

This is a str method in Python 3, but in Python 2, you'll want to look at the PyICU or py2casefold - several answers address this here.

Unicode Python 3

Python 3 handles plain string literals as unicode:

>>> string = 'Километр'
>>> string
'Километр'
>>> string.lower()
'километр'

Python 2, plain string literals are bytes

In Python 2, the below, pasted into a shell, encodes the literal as a string of bytes, using utf-8.

And lower doesn't map any changes that bytes would be aware of, so we get the same string.

>>> string = 'Километр'
>>> string
'\xd0\x9a\xd0\xb8\xd0\xbb\xd0\xbe\xd0\xbc\xd0\xb5\xd1\x82\xd1\x80'
>>> string.lower()
'\xd0\x9a\xd0\xb8\xd0\xbb\xd0\xbe\xd0\xbc\xd0\xb5\xd1\x82\xd1\x80'
>>> print string.lower()
Километр

In scripts, Python will object to non-ascii (as of Python 2.5, and warning in Python 2.4) bytes being in a string with no encoding given, since the intended coding would be ambiguous. For more on that, see the Unicode how-to in the docs and PEP 263

Use Unicode literals, not str literals

So we need a unicode string to handle this conversion, accomplished easily with a unicode string literal, which disambiguates with a u prefix (and note the u prefix also works in Python 3):

>>> unicode_literal = u'Километр'
>>> print(unicode_literal.lower())
километр

Note that the bytes are completely different from the str bytes - the escape character is '\u' followed by the 2-byte width, or 16 bit representation of these unicode letters:

>>> unicode_literal
u'\u041a\u0438\u043b\u043e\u043c\u0435\u0442\u0440'
>>> unicode_literal.lower()
u'\u043a\u0438\u043b\u043e\u043c\u0435\u0442\u0440'

Now if we only have it in the form of a str, we need to convert it to unicode. Python's Unicode type is a universal encoding format that has many advantages relative to most other encodings. We can either use the unicode constructor or str.decode method with the codec to convert the str to unicode:

>>> unicode_from_string = unicode(string, 'utf-8') # "encoding" unicode from string
>>> print(unicode_from_string.lower())
километр
>>> string_to_unicode = string.decode('utf-8') 
>>> print(string_to_unicode.lower())
километр
>>> unicode_from_string == string_to_unicode == unicode_literal
True

Both methods convert to the unicode type - and same as the unicode_literal.

Best Practice, use Unicode

It is recommended that you always work with text in Unicode.

Software should only work with Unicode strings internally, converting to a particular encoding on output.

Can encode back when necessary

However, to get the lowercase back in type str, encode the python string to utf-8 again:

>>> print string
Километр
>>> string
'\xd0\x9a\xd0\xb8\xd0\xbb\xd0\xbe\xd0\xbc\xd0\xb5\xd1\x82\xd1\x80'
>>> string.decode('utf-8')
u'\u041a\u0438\u043b\u043e\u043c\u0435\u0442\u0440'
>>> string.decode('utf-8').lower()
u'\u043a\u0438\u043b\u043e\u043c\u0435\u0442\u0440'
>>> string.decode('utf-8').lower().encode('utf-8')
'\xd0\xba\xd0\xb8\xd0\xbb\xd0\xbe\xd0\xbc\xd0\xb5\xd1\x82\xd1\x80'
>>> print string.decode('utf-8').lower().encode('utf-8')
километр

So in Python 2, Unicode can encode into Python strings, and Python strings can decode into the Unicode type.

• bballdave025: I have one note that doesn't necessarily apply to the OP's question, but which is important with portability (internationalization) when doing case insensitive matching. With case-insensitive matching, diacritics (accent marks) may become a concern. Example: >>> "raison d'être".casefold(); "raison d'être" Check out this answer about unidecode

Answer 3

With Python 2, this doesn't work for non-English words in UTF-8. In this case decode('utf-8') can help:

>>> s='Километр'
>>> print s.lower()
Километр
>>> print s.decode('utf-8').lower()
километр

• bballdave025: Perhaps we should be a bit more explicit by saying that the decode('utf-8') is not only unnecessary in Python 3, but causes an error. (ref). Example: $python3; >>>s='Километр'; >>>print (s.lower); #result: километр >>>s.decode('utf-8').lower(); #result: ...AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'decode' We can see a second way to do this, referencing the excellent answer of @AaronHall. >>>s.casefold() #result: километр

Answer 4

Also, you can overwrite some variables:

s = input('UPPER CASE')
lower = s.lower()

If you use like this:

s = "Kilometer"
print(s.lower()) - kilometer
print(s) - Kilometer

It will work just when called.

• Munim Munna: Question is how to transform string to lowercase. How this answer got so many up-votes?
• vossmalte: s=s.lower() is the way to go.
• Ekrem Dinçel: @m00lti Why s? What the variable name has to do with the question?
• ergo: @EkremDinçel s like string, i think.
• vossmalte: s like its used in the answer

Answer 5

Don't try this, totally un-recommend, don't do this:

import string
s='ABCD'
print(''.join([string.ascii_lowercase[string.ascii_uppercase.index(i)] for i in s]))

Output:

abcd

Since no one wrote it yet you can use swapcase (so uppercase letters will become lowercase, and vice versa) (and this one you should use in cases where i just mentioned (convert upper to lower, lower to upper)):

s='ABCD'
print(s.swapcase())

Output:

abcd

Answer 6

There are several different ways in which this can be done.

1. Using .lower() method

original_string = "UPPERCASE"
lowercase_string = original_string.lower()
print(lowercase_string) # Output: "uppercase"

2. Using str.lower()

original_string = "UPPERCASE"
lowercase_string = str.lower(original_string)
print(lowercase_string) # Output: "uppercase"

3. Using combination of str.translate() and str.maketrans()

original_string = "UPPERCASE"
lowercase_string = original_string.translate(str.maketrans(string.ascii_uppercase, string.ascii_lowercase))
print(lowercase_string) # Output: "uppercase"

Answer 7

There are various ways of converting string into lowercase.

use what suits you.

1- .lower() function.

Syntax: string.islower()

Properties:

• No Arguments: The .lower() method takes no arguments.
• Checks Automatically: If no uppercase characters found in given string, it returns the original string.
• Ignores anythings other then then strings: It ignores the numbers, symbols, unique things etc between the strings.

Example: (no arguments taken)

message = 'I LOVE Python'
# convert message to lowercase
print(message.lower())

Output:

i love python

Example: (ignores numbers)

# example string
string = "THIS SHOULD BE LOWERCASE!"
print(string.lower())
# string with numbers
# all alphabets should be lowercase
string = "Th!s Sh0uLd B3 L0w3rCas3!"
print(string.lower())

this should be lowercase! th!s sh0uld b3 l0w3rcas3!

Unique usage: Use You can compare 2 strings

# first string
firstString = "I AM ALI!"
# second string
secondString = "i aM AlI!"
if(firstString.lower() == secondString.lower()):
 print("The strings are same.")
else:
 print("The strings are not same.")

Output: The strings are same.

2- SwapCase Function

• It will swap the wholecase.

s = 'IAMALI'
print(s.swapcase())

Output:

iamali

3- casefold() function

• More Power Convertion: the casefold() method is stronger and more aggressive, which means it will turn more characters into lower case and discover more matches.

s = 'IAmAli'
print(s.casefold())

Output:

iamali

Hope it helps.

• Andj: str.casefold() does not lowercase strings, if removes case distinctions, and for certain scripts the characters are uppercased rather than lowercased.

Answer 8

To change some, but not all, characters from uppercase to lowercase, use a combination of str.translate and str.maketrans:

s = 'ABC ABC'
s = s.translate(str.maketrans('AC','ac'))
print(s)
# aBc aBc

Answer 9

lowercasing

This method not only converts all uppercase letters of the Latin alphabet into lowercase ones, but also shows how such logic is implemented. You can test this code in any online Python sandbox.

def turnIntoLowercase(string):
 
 lowercaseCharacters = ''
 
 abc = ['a','b','c','d','e','f','g','h','i','j','k','l','m', 
 'n','o','p','q','r','s','t','u','v','w','x','y','z',
 'A','B','C','D','E','F','G','H','I','J','K','L','M',
 'N','O','P','Q','R','S','T','U','V','W','X','Y','Z']
 
 for character in string:
 if character not in abc:
 lowercaseCharacters += character
 elif abc.index(character) <= 25:
 lowercaseCharacters += character
 else: 
 lowercaseCharacters += abc[abc.index(character) - 26]
 return lowercaseCharacters
string = str(input("Enter your string, please: " ))

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print(turnIntoLowercase(string = string))

Performance check

Now, let's enter the following string (and press Enter) to make sure everything works as intended:

# Enter your string, please: 
"PYTHON 3.11.2, 15TH FeB 2023"

Result:

"python 3.11.2, 15th feb 2023"

Answer 10

If you want to convert a list of strings to lowercase, you can map str.lower:

list_of_strings = ['CamelCase', 'in', 'Python']
list(map(str.lower, list_of_strings)) # ['camelcase', 'in', 'python']