how to lowercase in the correct locale

[davidklonski]

Hello

I have strings in different languages, all of them start with a capital letter (for those languages that support it).
Is there a locale-aware method to change those strings so that the first letter will be in lowercase?
The solution must be locale specific.

For example:
The string 'Écran' (Screen in English) will need to be converted to 'écran'.

thanks in advance

[drawmack]

WARNING this code is untested and typed directly into the textarea of the message board so it probably contains errors.

Step 1: create a file called lc_first_locs.txt that contains all of the locales where the first letter should be lowercase. Something like this

place 1
place 2
place 3

Step 2: in the same directory with lc_first_locs.txt create a file named whatever you link and include this function in that file:

<?php
function locale_specific_strtolower($string,$local) {
    //get locales with lowercase first letters
    $lcfll = file('lc_first_locs.txt');

//convert the input string to lowercase
$string = strtolower($string);

//convert the lc string to uppercase the first letter if necessary
if(in_array($locale,$lcfll)) {
    return $string;
} else {
    return ucfirst($string);
} //end if
} //end locale_specific_strtolower
?>

Step 3: include the file that contains the above function in any script you want to use this function

Step 4: call the above function with a string and a locale and watch the magic happen

[davidklonski]

I have found the following useful:

mb_strtolower($string, mb_detect_encoding($string));

Just make sure to include php_mbstring.dll in php.ini