PHP: lcfirst - Manual

Example #1 lcfirst() example

<?php
$foo = 'HelloWorld';
echo lcfirst($foo), PHP_EOL;             // helloWorld

$bar = 'HELLO WORLD!';
echo lcfirst($bar), PHP_EOL;             // hELLO WORLD!
echo lcfirst(strtoupper($bar)), PHP_EOL; // hELLO WORLD!
?>

Easiest work-around I've found for <5.3:
<?php

$string = "CamelCase"
$string{0} = strtolower($string{0})
echo $string; // outputs camelCase

?>

In some cases maybe more useful?

 $lower = strtolower( substr($upper,0,1) ) . substr($upper,1);

A slight modification from Northie's post here ( http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.ucfirst.php#68443), where lcfirst may not exist in your PHP build:

<?php

if(false === function_exists('lcfirst'))
{
    /**
     * Make a string's first character lowercase
     *
     * @param string $str
     * @return string the resulting string.
     */
    function lcfirst( $str ) {
        $str[0] = strtolower($str[0]);
        return (string)$str;
    }
}

/* Tests */
echo var_dump(lcFirst(NULL)).'<br />';    /* string(0) ""  */
echo var_dump(lcFirst(''))  .'<br />';    /* string(0) ""  */
echo var_dump(lcFirst('S')) .'<br />';    /* string(1) "S" */
echo var_dump(lcFirst('É')) .'<br />';    /* string(0) "�" */
echo var_dump(lcFirst('Hello World!!!')); /* string(14) "hello World!!!"  */