[Python-Dev] str.ascii_lower

[Martin v. Loewis]

Jeff Epler wrote:

>>>>u"I".lower()  # Python bug? (should be u'\u0131')
> 
> u'i'

As Guido says: unicode.tolower is locale-inaware;
it uses the Unicode Consortium character properties
instead to determine the lower-case character.

>>>>"I".lower()   # C library bug? (should be "\xc4\xb1")*
> 
> 'I'

This is really a limitation of the C language, not of
the C library. The interface is

char tolower(char input);

so it can only accept and return a single char. Multi-byte
characters are not supported in that interface.

Traditionally, for characters that cannot be converted,
tolower returns its argument.

>>>>"I".lower()   # (UTF-8 locale works properly in english)
> 
> 'i'

This is because "i" is a single byte in UTF-8.

Regards,
Martin