Format string to title case

Question

How do I format a string to title case?

Answer 1

Here is a simple static method to do this in C#:

public static string ToTitleCaseInvariant(string targetString)
{
    return System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(targetString);
}

Answer 2

In what language?

In PHP it is:

ucwords()

example:

$HelloWorld = ucwords('hello world');

Answer 3

Without using a ready-made function, a super-simple low-level algorithm to convert a string to title case:

convert first character to uppercase.
for each character in string,
    if the previous character is whitespace,
        convert character to uppercase.

This asssumes the "convert character to uppercase" will do that correctly regardless of whether or not the character is case-sensitive (e.g., '+').

Answer 4

If the language you are using has a supported method/function then just use that (as in the C# ToTitleCase method)

If it does not, then you will want to do something like the following:
(1) Read in the string
(2) Take the first word
(3) Capatilise the first letter of that word*
(4) Go forward and find the next word
(5) Go to 3 if not at the end of the string, otherwise exit

*To capatilise it in, say, C - use the ascii codes (http://www.asciitable.com/) to find the integer value of the char and subtract 32 from it.

There would need to be much more error checking in the code (ensuring valid letters etc.), and the "Capatilise" function will need to impose some sort of "title-case scheme" on the letters to check for words that do not need to be capatilised ('and', 'but' etc. Here http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=349913 is a good scheme)

Answer 5

Here's a Perl solution http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/title_case

Here's a Ruby solution http://frankschmitt.org/projects/title-case

Here's a Ruby one-liner solution: http://snippets.dzone.com/posts/show/4702

'some string here'.gsub(/\b\w/){$&.upcase}

What the one-liner is doing is using a regular expression substitution of the first character of each word with the uppercase version of it.

Answer 6

I would be wary of automatically upcasing all whitespace-preceded-words in scenarios where I would run the risk of attracting the fury of nitpickers.

I would at least consider implementing a dictionary for exception cases like articles and conjunctions. Behold:

"Beauty and the Beast"

And when it comes to proper nouns, the thing gets much uglier.

Answer 7

With perl you could do this:

my $tc_string = join ' ', map { ucfirst($_) } split /\s+/, $string;

Answer 8

See http://kiev.pm.org/node/229

Answer 9

In Perl:

$string =~ s/(\w+)/\u\L$1/g;

That's even in the FAQ.

Answer 10

Here you have a C++ version. It's got a set of non uppercaseable words like prononuns and prepositions. However, I would not recommend automating this process if you are to deal with important texts.

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <vector>
#include <cctype>
#include <set>

using namespace std;

typedef vector<pair<string, int> > subDivision;
set<string> nonUpperCaseAble;

subDivision split(string & cadena, string delim = " "){
    subDivision retorno;
    int pos, inic = 0;
    while((pos = cadena.find_first_of(delim, inic)) != cadena.npos){
     if(pos-inic > 0){
      retorno.push_back(make_pair(cadena.substr(inic, pos-inic), inic));
     }
     inic = pos+1;
    }
    if(inic != cadena.length()){
     retorno.push_back(make_pair(cadena.substr(inic, cadena.length() - inic), inic));
    }
    return retorno;
}

string firstUpper (string & pal){
    pal[0] = toupper(pal[0]);
    return pal;
}

int main()
{
    nonUpperCaseAble.insert("the");
    nonUpperCaseAble.insert("of");
    nonUpperCaseAble.insert("in");
    // ...

    string linea, resultado;
    cout << "Type the line you want to convert: " << endl;
    getline(cin, linea);

    subDivision trozos = split(linea);
    for(int i = 0; i < trozos.size(); i++){
     if(trozos[i].second == 0)
     {
      resultado += firstUpper(trozos[i].first);
     }
     else if (linea[trozos[i].second-1] == ' ')
     {
      if(nonUpperCaseAble.find(trozos[i].first) == nonUpperCaseAble.end())
      {
       resultado += " " + firstUpper(trozos[i].first);
      }else{
       resultado += " " + trozos[i].first;
      }
     }
     else
     {
      resultado += trozos[i].first;
     }  
    }

    cout << resultado << endl;
    getchar();
    return 0;
}

Answer 11

Any suggestion about Javascript?

Answer 12

I think using the CultureInfo is not always reliable, this the the simple and handy way to manipulate string manually:

string sourceName = txtTextBox.Text.ToLower(); string destinationName = sourceName[0].ToUpper();

for (int i = 0; i < (sourceName.Length - 1); i++) { if (sourceName[i + 1] == "") { destinationName += sourceName[i + 1]; } else { destinationName += sourceName[i + 1]; } txtTextBox.Text = desinationName;

Answer 13

There is a built-in formula PROPER(n) in Excel.

Was quite pleased to see I didn't have to write it myself!

Answer 14

http://titlecase.com/ has an API

Answer 15

In Silverlight there is no ToTitleCase in the TextInfo class.

Here's a simple regex based way.

Note: Silverlight doesn't have precompiled regexes, but for me this performance loss is not an issue.

    public string TitleCase(string str)
    {
        return Regex.Replace(str, @"\w+", (m) =>
        {
            string tmp = m.Value;
            return char.ToUpper(tmp[0]) + tmp.Substring(1, tmp.Length - 1).ToLower();
        });
    }