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lc EXPR
lc

Returns a lowercased version of EXPR. This is the internal function implementing the \L escape in double-quoted strings.

If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

What gets returned depends on several factors:

If use bytes is in effect:
On EBCDIC platforms

The results are what the C language system call tolower() returns.

On ASCII platforms

The results follow ASCII semantics. Only characters A-Z change, to a-z respectively.

Otherwise, If EXPR has the UTF8 flag set

If the current package has a subroutine named ToLower, it will be used to change the case (See "User-Defined Case Mappings" in perlunicode.) Otherwise Unicode semantics are used for the case change.

Otherwise, if use locale is in effect

Respects current LC_CTYPE locale. See perllocale.

Otherwise, if use feature 'unicode_strings' is in effect:

Unicode semantics are used for the case change. Any subroutine named ToLower will not be used.

Otherwise:
On EBCDIC platforms

The results are what the C language system call tolower() returns.

On ASCII platforms

ASCII semantics are used for the case change. The lowercase of any character outside the ASCII range is the character itself.