See the current Perl documentation for uc.
Here is our local, out-dated (pre-5.6) version:

uc - return upper-case version of a string

uc EXPR
uc

Returns an uppercased version of
EXPR. This is the internal function implementing the \U escape in double-quoted strings. Respects current
LC_CTYPE locale if use locale in force. See the perllocale manpage.
If
EXPR is omitted, uses $_.