lcfirst()

The PHP lcfirst() function makes the first character of a string lowercase and returns the modified string. Only the very first character is touched — the rest of the string is left exactly as it is. This page covers its syntax, return value, behavior with non-letters and Unicode, and the common situations where it is useful.

Syntax

lcfirst(string $string): string

It accepts a single required parameter and returns a new string — lcfirst() does not modify the original variable in place.

Return value: the resulting string with its first character lowercased.

Basic example

Only the leading H changes; the rest stays untouched:

hello World!

When would I use it?

lcfirst() is small but handy whenever the first character carries meaning:

• Generating camelCase identifiers. Turn GetUserName into getUserName for method or property names.
• Normalizing user input that may arrive capitalized when you store it lowercased.
• Sentence/list formatting, where the first word of a fragment should not start with a capital letter.

<?php
// PascalCase -> camelCase
echo lcfirst("UserProfile"); // userProfile
?>

userProfile

Behavior with non-letters and already-lowercase input

If the first character is not an uppercase letter — a digit, symbol, space, or an already-lowercase letter — lcfirst() returns the string unchanged.

<?php
echo lcfirst("Hello"), "\n"; // hello
echo lcfirst("123ABC"), "\n"; // 123ABC (first char is a digit)
echo lcfirst(" Hello"), "\n"; // " Hello" (leading space is unchanged)
echo lcfirst(""), "\n";       // "" (empty string)
?>

hello
123ABC
 Hello

Gotcha: lcfirst() is byte-based, not Unicode-aware

lcfirst() only handles single-byte ASCII letters. Multibyte characters such as accented or non-Latin letters are not lowercased correctly, because the function operates on the first byte rather than the first character.

<?php
echo lcfirst("Élan"); // stays "Élan" (É is multibyte)
?>

Élan

For multibyte strings, lowercase the first character yourself with mb_strtolower() and mb_substr():

<?php
$str = "Élan";
$first = mb_strtolower(mb_substr($str, 0, 1), "UTF-8");
echo $first . mb_substr($str, 1); // élan
?>

élan

Related functions

• ucfirst() — the opposite: makes the first character uppercase.
• ucwords() — uppercases the first letter of every word.
• strtolower() — lowercases the entire string.
• strtoupper() — uppercases the entire string.

Practice