Converting a char to uppercase

You can use Character#toUpperCase() for this.

char fUpper = Character.toUpperCase(f);
char lUpper = Character.toUpperCase(l);

It has however some limitations since the world is aware of many more characters than can ever fit in 16bit char range. See also the following excerpt of the javadoc:

Note: This method cannot handle supplementary characters. To support all Unicode characters, including supplementary characters, use the toUpperCase(int) method.

Instead of using existing utilities, you may try below conversion using boolean operation:

To upper case:

 char upperChar = 'l' & 0x5f

To lower case:

   char lowerChar = 'L' ^ 0x20

How it works:

Binary, hex and decimal table:

------------------------------------------
| Binary   |   Hexadecimal     | Decimal |
-----------------------------------------
| 1011111  |    0x5f           |  95     |
------------------------------------------
| 100000   |    0x20           |  32     |
------------------------------------------

Let's take an example of small l to L conversion:

The binary AND operation: (l & 0x5f)

l character has ASCII 108 and 01101100 is binary represenation.

   1101100
&  1011111
-----------
   1001100 = 76 in decimal which is **ASCII** code of L

Similarly the L to l conversion:

The binary XOR operation: (L ^ 0x20)

   1001100
^  0100000
-----------
   1101100 = 108 in decimal which is **ASCII** code of l

Have a look at the java.lang.Character class, it provides a lot of useful methods to convert or test chars.

f = Character.toUpperCase(f);
l = Character.toUpperCase(l);

Since you know the chars are lower case, you can subtract the according ASCII value to make them uppercase:

char a = 'a';
a -= 32;
System.out.println("a is " + a); //a is A

Here is an ASCII table for reference