### ----------------------------------------------------
### -- P5lc
### -- Licenses: Artistic-2.0
### -- Authors: Elizabeth Mattijsen
### -- File: README.md
### ----------------------------------------------------
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NAME
====

Raku port of Perl's lc() / uc() built-ins

SYNOPSIS
========

    use P5lc;

    say lc "FOOBAR"; # foobar
    with "ZIPPO" {
        say lc();  # zippo, may need to use parens to avoid compilation error
    }

    say uc "foobar"; # FOOBAR
    with "zippo" {
        say uc();  # ZIPPO, may need to use parens to avoid compilation error
    }

DESCRIPTION
===========

This module tries to mimic the behaviour of Perl's `lc` / `uc` built-ins as closely as possible in the Raku Programming Language.

ORIGINAL PERL 5 DOCUMENTATION
=============================

    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:
                The results follow ASCII rules. Only the characters "A-Z"
                change, to "a-z" respectively.

            Otherwise, if "use locale" (but not "use locale
            ':not_characters'") is in effect:
                Respects current LC_CTYPE locale for code points < 256; and
                uses Unicode rules for the remaining code points (this last
                can only happen if the UTF8 flag is also set). See perllocale.

                Starting in v5.20, Perl wil use full Unicode rules if the
                locale is UTF-8. Otherwise, there is a deficiency in this
                scheme, which is that case changes that cross the 255/256
                boundary are not well-defined. For example, the lower case of
                LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SHARP S (U+1E9E) in Unicode rules is
                U+00DF (on ASCII platforms). But under "use locale" (prior to
                v5.20 or not a UTF-8 locale), the lower case of U+1E9E is
                itself, because 0xDF may not be LATIN SMALL LETTER SHARP S in
                the current locale, and Perl has no way of knowing if that
                character even exists in the locale, much less what code point
                it is. Perl returns the input character unchanged, for all
                instances (and there aren't many) where the 255/256 boundary
                would otherwise be crossed.

            Otherwise, If EXPR has the UTF8 flag set:
                Unicode rules are used for the case change.

            Otherwise, if "use feature 'unicode_strings'" or "use locale
            ':not_characters'" is in effect:
                Unicode rules are used for the case change.

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

    uc EXPR
    uc      Returns an uppercased version of EXPR. This is the internal
            function implementing the "\U" escape in double-quoted strings. It
            does not attempt to do titlecase mapping on initial letters. See
            "ucfirst" for that.

            If EXPR is omitted, uses $_.

            This function behaves the same way under various pragma, such as
            in a locale, as "lc" does.

PORTING CAVEATS
===============

In future language versions of Raku, it will become impossible to access the `$_` variable of the caller's scope, because it will not have been marked as a dynamic variable. So please consider changing:

    lc;

to either:

    lc($_);

or, using the subroutine as a method syntax, with the prefix `.` shortcut to use that scope's `$_` as the invocant:

    .&lc;

AUTHOR
======

Elizabeth Mattijsen <liz@raku.rocks>

If you like this module, or what I’m doing more generally, committing to a [small sponsorship](https://github.com/sponsors/lizmat/) would mean a great deal to me!

Source can be located at: https://github.com/lizmat/P5lc . Comments and Pull Requests are welcome.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
=====================

Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023 Elizabeth Mattijsen

Re-imagined from Perl as part of the CPAN Butterfly Plan.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the Artistic License 2.0.



