From: Rick Dyson [Rick-Dyson@UIowa.EDU]
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2002 5:16 PM
To: Info-VAX@Mvb.Saic.Com
Subject: Re: STR$lowercase ?

Steve Lionel wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2002 17:32:49 GMT, Rick Dyson <Rick-Dyson@UIowa.EDU>
> wrote:
> 
> >There is a STR$UPCASE system service in the STR$ system, but I have a user that
> >would like to force lowercase in his Fortran program and I can't quickly find
> >an answer to his question.  Is there such a pre-existing VMS service or function
> >that can be easily called from a Fortran program?
> 
> One can call LIB$MOVTC with LIB$AB_LOWERCASE as the translation table.
> The catch is that you have to hand-craft a descriptor for this, but
> it's easy to do.  Here's an example:
> 
>         character* 10 old,new
>         external lib$ab_lowercase
>         integer*4 tabledesc(2)
>         old = 'ABCDEFGHIJ'
>         tabledesc(1) = 256
>         tabledesc(2) = loc(lib$ab_lowercase)
>         istat = LIB$MOVTC (old,' ',tabledesc,new)
>         write (*,*) new
>         end

	Excellent Suggestion Steve!  I was unaware of that Library service.

	With your help, I have written this which appears to work.  Does
anyone see any problems with it?  It is not documented nor tested for
robustness,
but it appears to work with a simple test program I through together...

        Integer Function Str$LowerCase (Input, Output)
        include '(LIB$ROUTINES)'
        Character*(*)   Input, Output
        Integer         TableDesc (2)
        External        Lib$AB_LowerCase

        Str$LowerCase = -1
        TableDesc (1) = 256
        TableDesc (2) = Loc (Lib$AB_LowerCase)
        Str$LowerCase = Lib$MovTC (Input, ' ', TableDesc, Output)

        Return
        End

THANKS AGAIN!  That was pretty fast too!

Rick