How do I lowercase a string in Python? - python

Is there a way to convert a string to lowercase?
"Kilometers" → "kilometers"


Use str.lower():
"Kilometer".lower()


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.


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


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.


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


I would like to provide the summary of all possible methods
.lower() method.
str.lower()
combination of str.translate() and str.maketrans()
.lower() method
original_string = "UPPERCASE"
lowercase_string = original_string.lower()
print(lowercase_string) # Output: "uppercase"
str.lower()
original_string = "UPPERCASE"
lowercase_string = str.lower(original_string)
print(lowercase_string) # Output: "uppercase"
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"


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: " ))
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"


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']

Related

Python How to convert 8-bit ASCII string to 16-Bit Unicode

Although Python 3.x solved the problem that uppercase and lowercase for some locales (for example tr_TR.utf8) Python 2.x branch lacks this. Several workaround for this issuse like https://github.com/emre/unicode_tr/ but did not like this kind of a solution.
So I am implementing a new upper/lower/capitalize/title methods for monkey-patching unicode class with
string.maketrans method.
The problem with maketrans is the lenghts of two strings must have same lenght.
The nearest solution came to my mind is "How can I convert 1 Byte char to 2 bytes?"
Note: translate method does work only ascii encoding, when I pass u'İ' (1 byte length \u0130) as arguments to translate gives ascii encoding error.
from string import maketrans
import unicodedata
c1 = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD',u'i').encode('utf-8')
c2 = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD',u'İ').encode('utf-8')
c1,len(c1)
('\xc4\xb1', 2)
# c2,len(c2)
# ('I', 1)
'istanbul'.translate( maketrans(c1,c2))
ValueError: maketrans arguments must have same length

Unicode objects allow multicharacter translation via a dictionary instead of two byte strings mapped through maketrans.
#!python2
#coding:utf8
D = {ord(u'i'):u'İ'}
print u'istanbul'.translate(D)
Output:
İstanbul
If you start with an ASCII byte string and want the result in UTF-8, simply decode/encode around the translation:
#!python2
#coding:utf8
D = {ord(u'i'):u'İ'}
s = 'istanbul'.decode('ascii')
t = s.translate(D)
s = t.encode('utf8')
print repr(s)
Output:
'\xc4\xb0stanbul'
The following technique can do the job of maketrans. Note that the dictionary keys must be Unicode ordinals, but the value can be Unicode ordinals, Unicode strings or None. If None, the character is deleted when translated.
#!python2
#coding:utf8
def maketrans(a,b):
return dict(zip(map(ord,a),b))
D = maketrans(u'àáâãäå',u'ÀÁÂÃÄÅ')
print u'àbácâdãeäfåg'.translate(D)
Output:
ÀbÁcÂdÃeÄfÅg
Reference: str.translate

as I hold the string of hexadecimal format without encoding the string?

The general problem is that I need the hexadecimal string stays in that format to assign it to a variable and not to save the coding?
no good:
>>> '\x61\x74'
'at'
>>> a = '\x61\x74'
>>> a
'at'
works well, but is not as:
>>> '\x61\x74'
'\x61\x74' ????????
>>> a = '\x61\x74'
>>> a
'\x61\x74' ????????

Use r prefix (explained on SO)
a = r'\x61\x74'
b = '\x61\x74'
print (a) #prints \x61\x74
print (b) # prints at

It is the same data. Python lets you specify a literal string using different methods, one of which is to use escape codes to represent bytes.
As such, '\x61' is the same character value as 'a'. Python just chooses to show printable ASCII characters as printable ASCII characters instead of the escape code, just because that makes working with bytestrings that much easier.
If you need the literal slash, x character and the two digit 6 and 1 characters (so a string of length 4), you need to double the slash or use raw strings.
To illustrate:
>>> '\x61' == 'a' # two notations for the same value
True
>>> len('\x61') # it's just 1 character
1
>>> '\\x61' # escape the escape
'\\x61'
>>> r'\x61' # or use a raw literal instead
'\\x61'
>>> len('\\x61') # which produces 4 characters
4

String.maketrans for English and Persian numbers

I have a function like this:
persian_numbers = '۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰'
english_numbers = '1234567890'
arabic_numbers = '١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠'
english_trans = string.maketrans(english_numbers, persian_numbers)
arabic_trans = string.maketrans(arabic_numbers, persian_numbers)
text.translate(english_trans)
text.translate(arabic_trans)
I want it to translate all Arabic and English numbers to Persian. But Python says:
english_translate = string.maketrans(english_numbers, persian_numbers)
ValueError: maketrans arguments must have same length
I tried to encode strings with Unicode utf-8 but I always got some errors! Sometimes the problem is Arabic string instead! Do you know a better solution for this job?
EDIT:
It seems the problem is Unicode characters length in ASCII. An Arabic number like '۱' is two character -- that I find out with ord(). And the length problem starts from here :-(

See unidecode library which converts all strings into UTF8. It is very useful in case of number input in different languages.
In Python 2:
>>> from unidecode import unidecode
>>> a = unidecode(u"۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹")
>>> a
'0123456789'
>>> unidecode(a)
'0123456789'
In Python 3:
>>> from unidecode import unidecode
>>> a = unidecode("۰۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹")
>>> a
'0123456789'
>>> unidecode(a)
'0123456789'

Unicode objects can interpret these digits (arabic and persian) as actual digits -
no need to translate them by using character substitution.
EDIT -
I came out with a way to make your replacement using Python2 regular expressions:
# coding: utf-8
import re
# Attention: while the characters for the strings bellow are
# dislplayed indentically, inside they are represented
# by distinct unicode codepoints
persian_numbers = u'۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰'
arabic_numbers = u'١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠'
english_numbers = u'1234567890'
persian_regexp = u"(%s)" % u"|".join(persian_numbers)
arabic_regexp = u"(%s)" % u"|".join(arabic_numbers)
def _sub(match_object, digits):
return english_numbers[digits.find(match_object.group(0))]
def _sub_arabic(match_object):
return _sub(match_object, arabic_numbers)
def _sub_persian(match_object):
return _sub(match_object, persian_numbers)
def replace_arabic(text):
return re.sub(arabic_regexp, _sub_arabic, text)
def replace_persian(text):
return re.sub(arabic_regexp, _sub_persian, text)
Attempt that the "text" parameter must be unicode itself.
(also this code could be shortened
by using lambdas and combining some expressions in a single line, but there is no point in doing so, but for loosing readability)
It should work to you up to here, but please read on the original answer I had posted
-- original answer
So, if you instantiate your variables as unicode (prepending an u to the quote char), they are correctly understood in Python:
>>> persian_numbers = u'۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰'
>>> english_numbers = u'1234567890'
>>> arabic_numbers = u'١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠'
>>>
>>> print int(persian_numbers)
1234567890
>>> print int(english_numbers)
1234567890
>>> print int(arabic_numbers)
1234567890
>>> persian_numbers.isdigit()
True
>>>
By the way, the "maketrans" method does not exist for unicode objects (in Python2 - see the comments).
It is very important to understand the basics about unicode - for everyone, even people writing English only programs who think they will never deal with any char out of the 26 latin letters. When writing code that will deal with different chars it is vital - the program can't possibly work without you knowing what you are doing except by chance.
A very good article to read is http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html - please read it now.
You can keep in mind, while reading it, that Python allows one to translate unicode characters to a string in any "physical" encoding by using the "encode" method of unicode objects.
>>> arabic_numbers = u'١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠'
>>> len(arabic_numbers)
10
>>> enc_arabic = arabic_numbers.encode("utf-8")
>>> print enc_arabic
١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠
>>> len(enc_arabic)
20
>>> int(enc_arabic)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '\xd9\xa1\xd9\xa2\xd9\xa3\xd9\xa4\xd9\xa5\xd9\xa6\xd9\xa7\xd9\xa8\xd9\xa9\xd9\xa0'
Thus, the characters loose their sense as "single entities" and as digits when encoding - the encoded object (str type in Python 2.x) is justa strrng of bytes - which nonetheless is needed when sending these characters to any output from the program - be it console, GUI Window, database, html code, etc...

You can use persiantools package:
Examples:
>>> from persiantools import digits
>>> digits.en_to_fa("0987654321")
'۰۹۸۷۶۵۴۳۲۱'
>>> digits.ar_to_fa("٠٩٨٧٦٥٤٣٢١") # or digits.ar_to_fa(u"٠٩٨٧٦٥٤٣٢١")
'۰۹۸۷۶۵۴۳۲۱'

unidecode converts all characters from Persian to English, If you want to change only numbers follow bellow:
In python3 you can use this code to convert any Persian|Arabic number to English number while keeping other characters unchanged:
intab='۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠'
outtab='12345678901234567890'
translation_table = str.maketrans(intab, outtab)
output_text = input_text.translate(translation_table)

Use Unicode Strings:
persian_numbers = u'۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰'
english_numbers = u'1234567890'
arabic_numbers = u'١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠'
And make sure the encoding of your Python file is correct.

With this you can easily do that:
def p2e(persiannumber):
number={
'0':'۰',
'1':'۱',
'2':'۲',
'3':'۳',
'4':'۴',
'5':'۵',
'6':'۶',
'7':'۷',
'8':'۸',
'9':'۹',
}
for i,j in number.items():
persiannumber=persiannumber.replace(j,i)
return persiannumber
here is usage:
print(p2e('۳۱۹۶'))
#returns 3196

In Python 3 easiest way is:
str(int('۱۲۳'))
#123
but if number starts with 0 it have an issue.
so we can use zip() function:
for i, j in zip('1234567890', '۱۲۳۴۵۶۷۸۹۰'):
number.replace(i, j)

def persian_number(persiannumber):
number={
'0':'۰',
'1':'۱',
'2':'۲',
'3':'۳',
'4':'۴',
'5':'۵',
'6':'۶',
'7':'۷',
'8':'۸',
'9':'۹',
}
for i,j in number.items():
persiannumber=time2str.replace(i,j)
return time2str
persiannumber must be a string

I want one backslash - not two

I have a string that after print is like this: \x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71
But I want to change this string to "\x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71" which is not printable (it is necessary to write to serial port). I know that it ist problem with '\'. how can I replace this printable backslashes to unprintable?

If you want to decode your string, use decode() with 'string_escape' as parameter which will interpret the literals in your variable as python literal string (as if it were typed as constant string in your code).
mystr.decode('string_escape')

Use decode():
>>> st = r'\x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71'
>>> print st
\x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71
>>> print st.decode('string-escape')
MÿýfHq
That last garbage is what my Python prints when trying to print your unprintable string.

You are confusing the printable representation of a string literal with the string itself:
>>> c = '\x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71'
>>> c
'M\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80fHq'
>>> len(c)
11
>>> len('\x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71')
11
>>> len(r'\x4d\xff\xfd\x00\x02\x8f\x0e\x80\x66\x48\x71')
44

your_string.decode('string_escape')

python - problems with regular expression and unicode

Hi I have a problem in python. I try to explain my problem with an example.
I have this string:
>>> string = 'ÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿÀÁÂÃ'
>>> print string
ÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿÀÁÂÃ
and i want, for example, replace charachters different from Ñ,Ã,ï with ""
i have tried:
>>> rePat = re.compile('[^ÑÃï]',re.UNICODE)
>>> print rePat.sub("",string)
�Ñ�����������������������������ï�������������������Ã
I obtained this �.
I think that it's happen because this type of characters in python are represented by two position in the vector: for example \xc3\x91 = Ñ.
For this, when i make the regolar expression, all the \xc3 are not substitued. How I can do this type of sub?????
Thanks
Franco

You need to make sure that your strings are unicode strings, not plain strings (plain strings are like byte arrays).
Example:
>>> string = 'ÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿÀÁÂÃ'
>>> type(string)
<type 'str'>
# do this instead:
# (note the u in front of the ', this marks the character sequence as a unicode literal)
>>> string = u'\xd0\xd1\xd2\xd3\xd4\xd5\xd6\xd7\xd8\xd9\xda\xdb\xdc\xdd\xde\xdf\xe0\xe1\xe2\xe3\xe4\xe5\xe6\xe7\xe8\xe9\xea\xeb\xec\xed\xee\xef\xf0\xf1\xf2\xf3\xf4\xf5\xf6\xf7\xf8\xf9\xfa\xfb\xfc\xfd\xfe\xff\xc0\xc1\xc2\xc3'
# or:
>>> string = 'ÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿÀÁÂÃ'.decode('utf-8')
# ... but be aware that the latter will only work if the terminal (or source file) has utf-8 encoding
# ... it is a best practice to use the \xNN form in unicode literals, as in the first example
>>> type(string)
<type 'unicode'>
>>> print string
ÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿÀÁÂÃ
>>> rePat = re.compile(u'[^\xc3\x91\xc3\x83\xc3\xaf]',re.UNICODE)
>>> print rePat.sub("", string)
Ã
When reading from a file, string = open('filename.txt').read() reads a byte sequence.
To get the unicode content, do: string = unicode(open('filename.txt').read(), 'encoding'). Or: string = open('filename.txt').read().decode('encoding').
The codecs module can decode unicode streams (such as files) on-the-fly.
Do a google search for python unicode. Python unicode handling can be a bit hard to grasp at first, it pays to read up on it.
I live by this rule: "Software should only work with Unicode strings internally, converting to a particular encoding on output." (from http://www.amk.ca/python/howto/unicode)
I also recommend: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Unicode.html

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