How to compare character ignoring case in Freemarker?

Question

I need to compare strings case-insensitive in Freemarker template on Liferay Portal. I tried with:

<#if nav_item.getName().equalsIgnoreCase("home")>
    <!-- if do -->
</#if>

But I get error:

Expected hash. nav_item.getName() evaluated instead to freemarker.template.SimpleScalar on line 39, column 46 in navigation.ftl.

As indicated here, I can use the common flag Case insensitive to not differentiate the lower and upper-case variation of the same letter. So I tried with:

<#if nav_item.getName()?matches("home", "i")>

But does not work! I get error.
Any help is appreciated! Thank you!

Answer 1

?matches("home", "i") should work, so what error message do you get with it? Another solution is nav_item.name?lower_case == "home". (BTW, you don't have to write .getName(), just write .name.)