Convert file contents to lower case

Question

I have temp file with some lower-case and upper-case contents.

Input

Contents of my temp file:

hi
Jigar
GANDHI
jiga

I want to convert all upper to lower.

Command

I tried the following command:

sed -e "s/[A-Z]/[a-z]/g" temp

but got wrong output.

Output

I want it as:

hi
jigar
gandhi
jiga

What needs to be in the substitute part of argument for sed?

Answer 1

If your input only contains ASCII characters, you could use tr like:

tr A-Z a-z < input 

or (less easy to remember and type IMO; but not limited to ASCII latin letters, though in some implementations including GNU tr, still limited to single-byte characters, so in UTF-8 locales, still limited to ASCII letters):

tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' < input

if you have to use sed:

sed 's/.*/\L&/g' < input

(here assuming the GNU implementation).

With POSIX sed, you'd need to specify all the transliterations and then you can choose which letters you want to convert:

sed 'y/AǼBCΓDEFGH.../aǽbcγdefgh.../' < input

With awk:

awk '{print tolower($0)}' < input

Answer 2

Using vim, it's super simple:

$ vim filename
gg0guGZZ

Opens the file, gg goes to the first line, 0, first column. With guG, lowers the case of all the characters until the bottom of the file. ZZ saves and exits.

It should handle just about anything you throw at it; it'll ignore numbers, it'll handle non ASCII.

If you wanted to do the opposite, turn the lower cased letters into upper case, swap the u out for a U: gg0gUGZZ and you're set.

Answer 3

I like dd for this, myself.

<<\IN LC_ALL=C 2<>/dev/null \
dd conv=lcase
hi
Jigar 
GANDHI
jiga
IN

...gets...

hi
jigar
ghandi
jiga

The LC_ALL=C is to protect any multibytes in input - though any multibyte capitals will not be converted. The same is true for (GNU) tr - both apps are prone to input mangling in any non-C locale. iconv can be combined with either for a comprehensive solution.

The 2>/dev/null redirect discards dd's default status report - and its stderr. Without it dd would follow completion of a job like the above w/ printing information like how many bytes were processed and etc.

Answer 4

You can also use Perl 5:

perl -pe '$_=lc' temp

The option -p tells perl to run the specified expression once for each line of input, printing the result, i.e. the final value of $_. -e indicates that the program will be the next argument, as opposed to a file containing the script. lc converts to lowercase. Without an argument, it will operate on $_. And $_= saves that again so it will get printed.

A variation of that would be

perl -ne 'print lc' temp

Using -n is like -p except that $_ won't get printed in the end. So instead of saving to that variable, I'm including an explicit print statement.

One benefit of Perl in contrast to sed is that you don't need any GNU extensions. There are projects which have to be compatible with non-GNU environments but which also already have Perl a s a dependency. Compared with tr, it might be that Perl lc can be more easily made locale-aware. See the perllocale man page for details.

Answer 5

You need to capture the matched pattern and then use it in the replacement with a modifier:

sed 's/\([A-Z]\)/\L\1/g' temp

The \(...\) "captures" the enclosing matched text, the first capture goes to \1, the next to \2, etc. The numbering is according to opening brackets in case of nested captures.

The \L converts the captured pattern to lower case, there's also \U for upper case.

Answer 6

Further to MvG's answer, you could also use Perl 6:

perl6 -pe .=lc temp

Here $_ is implicit, and you don't need the single quotes to protect it from expansion by the shell ($_ being a special Bash parameter; see: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Special-Parameters.html)

Answer 7

Using Emacs, you could first select all text in your buffer. Then invoke

M-x downcase-region