I have a python list variable that contains strings. Is there a python function that can convert all the strings in one pass to lowercase and vice versa, uppercase?

It can be done with list comprehensions. These basically take the form of [function-of-item for item in some-list]. For example, to create a new list where all the items are lower-cased (or upper-cased in the second snippet), you would use:

>>> [x.lower() for x in ["A","B","C"]]
['a', 'b', 'c']

>>> [x.upper() for x in ["a","b","c"]]
['A', 'B', 'C']

You can also use the map function:

>>> map(lambda x:x.lower(),["A","B","C"])
['a', 'b', 'c']
>>> map(lambda x:x.upper(),["a","b","c"])
['A', 'B', 'C']

Besides being easier to read (for many people), list comprehensions win the speed race, too:

$ python2.6 -m timeit '[x.lower() for x in ["A","B","C"]]'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.03 usec per loop
$ python2.6 -m timeit '[x.upper() for x in ["a","b","c"]]'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.04 usec per loop

$ python2.6 -m timeit 'map(str.lower,["A","B","C"])'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.44 usec per loop
$ python2.6 -m timeit 'map(str.upper,["a","b","c"])'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.44 usec per loop

$ python2.6 -m timeit 'map(lambda x:x.lower(),["A","B","C"])'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.87 usec per loop
$ python2.6 -m timeit 'map(lambda x:x.upper(),["a","b","c"])'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.87 usec per loop

>>> map(str.lower,["A","B","C"])
['a', 'b', 'c']

List comprehension is how I’d do it, it’s the “Pythonic” way. The following transcript shows how to convert a list to all upper case then back to lower:

pax@paxbox7:~$ python3
Python 3.5.2 (default, Nov 17 2016, 17:05:23) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> x = ["one", "two", "three"] ; x
['one', 'two', 'three']

>>> x = [element.upper() for element in x] ; x
['ONE', 'TWO', 'THREE']

>>> x = [element.lower() for element in x] ; x
['one', 'two', 'three']

For this sample the comprehension is fastest

$ python -m timeit -s 's=["one","two","three"]*1000' '[x.upper for x in s]'
1000 loops, best of 3: 809 usec per loop

$ python -m timeit -s 's=["one","two","three"]*1000' 'map(str.upper,s)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.12 msec per loop

$ python -m timeit -s 's=["one","two","three"]*1000' 'map(lambda x:x.upper(),s)'
1000 loops, best of 3: 1.77 msec per loop

a student asking, another student with the same problem answering :))

fruits=['orange', 'grape', 'kiwi', 'apple', 'mango', 'fig', 'lemon']
newList = []
for fruit in fruits:
    newList.append(fruit.upper())
print(newList)

mylist = ['Mixed Case One', 'Mixed Case Two', 'Mixed Three']
print(list(map(lambda x: x.lower(), mylist)))
print(list(map(lambda x: x.upper(), mylist)))

Solution:

>>> s = []
>>> p = ['This', 'That', 'There', 'is', 'apple']
>>> [s.append(i.lower()) if not i.islower() else s.append(i) for i in p]
>>> s
>>> ['this', 'that', 'there', 'is','apple']

This solution will create a separate list containing the lowercase items, regardless of their original case. If the original case is upper then the list s will contain lowercase of the respective item in list p. If the original case of the list item is already lowercase in list p then the list s will retain the item’s case and keep it in lowercase. Now you can use list s instead of list p.

If your purpose is to matching with another string by converting in one pass, you can use str.casefold() as well.

This is useful when you have non-ascii characters and matching with ascii versions(eg: maße vs masse).Though str.lower or str.upper fails in such cases, str.casefold() will pass. This is available in Python 3 and the idea is discussed in detail with the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/31599276/4848659.

>>>str="Hello World";
>>>print(str.lower());
hello world
>>>print(str.upper());
HELLO WOLRD
>>>print(str.casefold());
hello world

A much simpler version of the top answer is given here by @Amorpheuses.

With a list of values in val:

valsLower = [item.lower() for item in vals]

This worked well for me with an f = open() text source.

You could try using:

my_list = ['india', 'america', 'china', 'korea']

def capitalize_list(item):
    return item.upper()

print(list(map(capitalize_list, my_list)))

Python3.6.8

In [1]: a = 'which option is the fastest'                                                                                                                                           

In [2]: %%timeit 
   ...: ''.join(a).upper() 
762 ns ± 11.4 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

In [3]: %%timeit  
   ...: map(lambda x:x.upper(), a) 
209 ns ± 5.73 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

In [4]: %%timeit  
   ...: map(str.upper, [i for i in a]) 
1.18 µs ± 11.3 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

In [5]: %%timeit 
   ...: [i.upper() for i in a] 
3.2 µs ± 64.1 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)

If you need a string or list as the output and not an iterator (this is for Python3), compare ''.join(string).upper() option to this:

In [10]: %%timeit  
    ...: [i for i in map(lambda x:x.upper(), a)] 
4.32 µs ± 112 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 100000 loops each)

If you are trying to convert all string to lowercase in the list, You can use pandas :

import pandas as pd

data = ['Study', 'Insights']

pd_d = list(pd.Series(data).str.lower())

output:

['study', 'insights']