# Case Mapping¶ ↑

Some string-oriented methods use case mapping.

In String:

- `String#capitalize`

- `String#capitalize!`

- `String#casecmp`

- `String#casecmp?`

- `String#downcase`

- `String#downcase!`

- `String#swapcase`

- `String#swapcase!`

- `String#upcase`

- `String#upcase!`

In Symbol:

- `Symbol#capitalize`

- `Symbol#casecmp`

- `Symbol#casecmp?`

- `Symbol#downcase`

- `Symbol#swapcase`

- `Symbol#upcase`

## Default Case Mapping¶ ↑

By default, all of these methods use full Unicode case mapping, which is suitable for most languages. See Section 3.13 (Default Case Algorithms) of the Unicode standard.

Non-ASCII case mapping and folding are supported for UTF-8, UTF-16BE/LE, UTF-32BE/LE, and ISO-8859-1~16 Strings/Symbols.

Context-dependent case mapping as described in Table 3-17 (Context Specification for Casing) of the Unicode standard is currently not supported.

In most cases, case conversions of a string have the same number of characters. There are exceptions (see also `:fold` below):

    s = "\u00DF" # => "ß"
    s.upcase     # => "SS"
    s = "\u0149" # => "ŉ"
    s.upcase     # => "ʼN"

Case mapping may also depend on locale (see also `:turkic` below):

    s = "\u0049"        # => "I"
    s.downcase          # => "i" # Dot above.
    s.downcase(:turkic) # => "ı" # No dot above.

Case changes may not be reversible:

    s = 'Hello World!' # => "Hello World!"
    s.downcase         # => "hello world!"
    s.downcase.upcase  # => "HELLO WORLD!" # Different from original s.

Case changing methods may not maintain Unicode normalization. See `String#unicode_normalize`).

## Options for Case Mapping¶ ↑

Except for `casecmp` and `casecmp?`, each of the case-mapping methods listed above accepts optional arguments, `*options`.

The arguments may be:

- `:ascii` only.

- `:fold` only.

- `:turkic` or `:lithuanian` or both.

The options:

- `:ascii`: ASCII-only mapping: uppercase letters (‘A’..‘Z’) are mapped to lowercase letters (‘a’..‘z); other characters are not changed

      s = "Foo \u00D8 \u00F8 Bar" # => "Foo Ø ø Bar"
      s.upcase                    # => "FOO Ø Ø BAR"
      s.downcase                  # => "foo ø ø bar"
      s.upcase(:ascii)            # => "FOO Ø ø BAR"
      s.downcase(:ascii)          # => "foo Ø ø bar"

- `:turkic`: Full Unicode case mapping, adapted for the Turkic languages that distinguish dotted and dotless I, for example Turkish and Azeri.

      s = 'Türkiye'       # => "Türkiye"
      s.upcase            # => "TÜRKIYE"
      s.upcase(:turkic)   # => "TÜRKİYE" # Dot above.

      s = 'TÜRKIYE'       # => "TÜRKIYE"
      s.downcase          # => "türkiye"
      s.downcase(:turkic) # => "türkıye" # No dot above.

- `:lithuanian`: Not yet implemented.

- `:fold` (available only for `String#downcase`, `String#downcase!`, and `Symbol#downcase`): Unicode case folding, which is more far-reaching than Unicode case mapping.

      s = "\u00DF"      # => "ß"
      s.downcase        # => "ß"
      s.downcase(:fold) # => "ss"
      s.upcase          # => "SS"

      s = "\uFB04"      # => "ﬄ"
      s.downcase        # => "ﬄ"
      s.upcase          # => "FFL"
      s.downcase(:fold) # => "ffl"