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#

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.

Remarks#

If x is a numeric matrix, y will contain garbage. No error message will be generated since GAUSS does not distinguish between numeric and character data in matrices.