It’s All Greek!

Difficulty: ★ ★ ☆ ☆

My recent ctype series got me thinking: What about coding a specific function that works with a non-Latin alphabet? The first alphabet I thought of was Greek. Why not check out the Unicode values of Greek and see whether you can code a few ctype functions that deal with this character set?

For this challenge, I present the Greek alphabet, upper- and lowercase:

Name Uppercase Unicode (Upper) Lowercase Unicode (Lower)
Alpha Α U+0391 α U+03B1
Beta Β U+0392 β U+03B2
Gamma Γ U+0393 γ U+03B3
Delta Δ U+0394 δ U+03B4
Epsilon Ε U+0395 ε U+03B5
Zeta Ζ U+0396 ζ U+03B6
Eta Η U+0397 η U+03B7
Theta Θ U+0398 θ U+03B8
Iota Ι U+0399 ι U+03B9
Kappa Κ U+039A κ U+03BA
Lambda Λ U+039B λ U+03BB
Mu Μ U+039C μ U+03BC
Nu Ν U+039D ν U+03BD
Xi Ξ U+039E ξ U+03BE
Omicron Ο U+039F ο U+03BF
Pi Π U+03A0 π U+03C0
Rho Ρ U+03A1 ρ U+03C1
Sigma Σ U+03A3 σ U+03C3
Tau Τ U+03A4 τ U+03C4
Upsilon Υ U+03A5 υ U+03C5
Phi Φ U+03A6 φ U+03C6
Chi Χ U+03A7 χ U+03C7
Psi Ψ U+03A8 ψ U+03C8
Omega Ω U+03A9 ω U+03C9

What’s missing here are various accent and breathing marks, which are part of the Greek language. It’s considered incorrect to write Greek without them, though for this Exercise I hope that Greek speakers will forgive me.

Your task is to write three programs that demonstrate two Greek language specific ctype functions: toGupper() and toGlower()

The target phrase is: Ξεσκεπαζω την Ψυχοφθορα Βδελυγμια

Roughly translated, this sentence means, “I uncover the soul-destroying abomination.” I’m unsure how often this phrase is uttered in Greek. Still, it uses most of the characters in the Greek alphabet, and I’ve thrown in a few capitals just to keep things interesting.

Employ your Greek-specific toGupper() and toGlower() functions to output the sample phrase twice: first in the Greek version of ALL CAPS and then in lowercase. Here’s output from my solution:

Original:
Ξεσκεπαζω την Ψυχοφθορα Βδελυγμια
ALL CAPS:
ΞΕΣΚΕΠΑΖΩ ΤΗΝ ΨΥΧΟΦΘΟΡΑ ΒΔΕΛΥΓΜΙΑ
lowercase:
ξεσκεπαζω την ψυχοφθορα βδελυγμια

Obviously, you must use wide characters for your solution. Refer to this series of Lessons for assistance. You don’t need to set the Greek locale for your solution to work; just rely upon the Unicode character values shown in the table above.

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