lower¶

Purpose¶

Converts a string or character matrix to lowercase.

Format¶

y = lower(x)¶

Parameters:	x (string or NxK matrix) – data to be converted to lowercase
Returns:	y (string or NxK matrix) – which contains the lowercase equivalent of the data in x.

Examples¶

// Load example dataframe
rep78 = loadd(getGAUSSHome("examples/auto2.dta"), "rep78");

print rep78[1:4];

  rep78
Average
Average
      .
Average

rep78_u = lower(rep78);
print rep78_u[1:4];

  rep78
average
average
      .
average

::

x = “MATH 401”; y = lower(x); print y;

math 401

The lower() function can be useful when performing case insensitive string comparisons. If you have a program that runs different code depending upon the variable name in a GAUSS dataset or spreadsheet file, you or your colleagues may want to analyze data with inconsistent use of case.

var1 = "Consumption";

if lower(var1) == "gdp";
   // code for gdp branch
else if lower(var1) == "consumption";
   // code for consumption branch
endif;

Using the lower() function, the code above will operate correctly whether var1 is Consumption, CONSUMPTION or consumption.