LOWER-CASE

The LOWER-CASE function returns a character string that contains the characters in the argument with each uppercase letter replaced by the corresponding lowercase letter.

The function type depends on the type of the argument, as follows:

Argument type Function type
Alphabetic Alphanumeric
Alphanumeric Alphanumeric
National National

Format

Read syntax diagramSkip visual syntax diagramFUNCTION LOWER-CASE (argument-1 )
argument-1
Must be class alphabetic, alphanumeric, or national and must be at least one character position in length.
Note: If argument-1 is of the alphanumeric class, it must not contain UTF-8 encoded data.

The same character string as argument-1 is returned, except that each uppercase letter is replaced by the corresponding lowercase letter.

If argument-1 is of class alphabetic or alphanumeric, the uppercase letters 'A' through 'Z' are replaced by the corresponding lowercase letters 'a' through 'z', where the range of 'A' through 'Z' and the range of 'a' through 'z' are as shown in EBCDIC collating sequence, regardless of the code page in effect.

If argument-1 is of class national, each uppercase letter is replaced by its corresponding lowercase letter based on the specification given in the Unicode database UnicodeData.txt, available from the Unicode Consortium at www.unicode.org/ .

The character string returned has the same length as argument-1.