Removing case sensitivity when searching a list

Question

I have created a library and a search interface. It will return results only if the first letter is uppercase as all my data starts with upper case letters. Is there a way of searching but removing the case sensitivity. I need it to not alter the data when it returns it.

The only method i can think of using is to change the first letter to uppercase but it seems really messy.

Thanks

UPDATE: Simplified version of what i'm trying to do

data = 'The Works of William Shakespeare'
key = 'The'
if key in data:
    print "Match Found"
Match Found

key = 'the'
if key in data:
    print "Match Found"

The key wasn't found in the second attempt. Is there a way of automatically changing the case of the data string and the case of the input key?

I don't know about others, but to me code would be more understandable than the description of the problem. — Azwr, Apr 23 '14 at 16:59
The usual as soon as posted this on here i realised i can just use .lower and that rectifies my problem. Thanks anyway guys!! — user3559732, Apr 23 '14 at 17:14
Have a nice day! Other useful functions : .upper() and .capitalize() — Azwr, Apr 23 '14 at 17:22
possible duplicate of [Case insensitive 'in' - Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3627784/case-insensitive-in-python) — Darrick Herwehe, Apr 23 '14 at 18:03

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 23 '14 at 16:57

0

Keep a separate field for the lower-cased version of the text you're searching, and then compare the lower-cased version of the search query.

answered Apr 23 '14 at 16:57

Amber

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 23 '14 at 17:14

Normalize the key that you are searching for. So if its in lower case, convert it to upper case (or in your case, initial caps), by using title():

key = 'the'
if key.title() in 'The Haystack I Need to Search':
    print('Found')
else:
    print('Did not find {}'.format(key))

Removing case sensitivity when searching a list

2 Answers2