How to lowercase every element of a collection efficiently?

You can do this with Google Collections:

    Collection<String> lowerCaseStrings = Collections2.transform(strings,
        new Function<String, String>() {
            public String apply(String str) {
                return str.toLowerCase();
            }
        }
    );

Yet another solution, but with Java 8 and above:

List<String> result = strings.stream()
                             .map(String::toLowerCase)
                             .collect(Collectors.toList());

This seems like a fairly clean solution for lists. It should allow for the particular List implementation being used to provide an implementation that is optimal for both the traversal of the list--in linear time--and the replacing of the string--in constant time.

public static void replace(List<String> strings)
{
    ListIterator<String> iterator = strings.listIterator();
    while (iterator.hasNext())
    {
        iterator.set(iterator.next().toLowerCase());
    }
}

---

This is the best that I can come up with for sets. As others have said, the operation cannot be performed in-place in the set for a number of reasons. The lower-case string may need to be placed in a different location in the set than the string it is replacing. Moreover, the lower-case string may not be added to the set at all if it is identical to another lower-case string that has already been added (e.g., "HELLO" and "Hello" will both yield "hello", which will only be added to the set once).

public static void replace(Set<String> strings)
{
    String[] stringsArray = strings.toArray(new String[0]);
    for (int i=0; i<stringsArray.length; ++i)
    {
        stringsArray[i] = stringsArray[i].toLowerCase();
    }
    strings.clear();
    strings.addAll(Arrays.asList(stringsArray));
}