Convert a Python list with strings all to lowercase or 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']