For strings with diactrical marks (umlauts, etc.), consider mb_convert_case().
ucfirst
(PHP 4, PHP 5)
ucfirst — Make a string's first character uppercase
Description
string ucfirst
( string $str
)
Returns a string with the first character of str capitalized, if that character is alphabetic.
Note that 'alphabetic' is determined by the current locale. For instance, in the default "C" locale characters such as umlaut-a (ä) will not be converted.
Parameters
- str
-
The input string.
Return Values
Returns the resulting string.
Examples
Example #1 ucfirst() example
<?php
$foo = 'hello world!';
$foo = ucfirst($foo); // Hello world!
$bar = 'HELLO WORLD!';
$bar = ucfirst($bar); // HELLO WORLD!
$bar = ucfirst(strtolower($bar)); // Hello world!
?>
ucfirst
NoName
13-Mar-2008 05:23
13-Mar-2008 05:23
charliefortune
20-Feb-2008 08:48
20-Feb-2008 08:48
Here's a function to capitalize segments of a name, and put the rest into lower case. You can pass the characters you want to use as delimiters.
i.e. <?php echo nameize("john o'grady-smith"); ?>
returns John O'Grady-Smith
<?php
function nameize($str,$a_char = array("'","-"," ")){
//$str contains the complete raw name string
//$a_char is an array containing the characters we use as separators for capitalization. If you don't pass anything, there are three in there as default.
$string = strtolower($str);
foreach ($a_char as $temp){
$pos = strpos($string,$temp);
if ($pos){
//we are in the loop because we found one of the special characters in the array, so lets split it up into chunks and capitalize each one.
$mend = '';
$a_split = explode($temp,$string);
foreach ($a_split as $temp2){
//capitalize each portion of the string which was separated at a special character
$mend .= ucfirst($temp2).$temp;
}
$string = substr($mend,0,-1);
}
}
return ucfirst($string);
}
?>
webmaster at onmyway dot cz
11-Feb-2008 08:31
11-Feb-2008 08:31
Inspired by the lcfirst function a simple mb_lcfirst to cope with multibyte strings:
<?php
function mb_lcfirst($str, $enc = null)
{
if($enc === null) $enc = mb_internal_encoding();
return mb_strtolower(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $enc), $enc).mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $enc), $enc);
}
?>
Uwe
27-Jul-2007 12:08
27-Jul-2007 12:08
@adefoor, Ken and Zee
Changing the case can only be done by understanding the text. Take for example "USA", "Sunday", "March", "I am ...", abbreviations like "prob." and so on.
adefoor at gmail dot com
13-Jul-2007 03:57
13-Jul-2007 03:57
Ken and zee
One thing I would do to make this more unviersally work would be to add strtolower() around your $sentence. Doing this will allow you to convert an all caps text block as well as an all lowercase text block.
<?php
function sentence_cap($impexp, $sentence_split) {
$textbad=explode($impexp, $sentence_split);
$newtext = array();
foreach ($textbad as $sentence) {
$sentencegood=ucfirst(strtolower($sentence));
$newtext[] = $sentencegood;
}
$textgood = implode($impexp, $newtext);
return $textgood;
}
$text = "this is a sentence. this is another sentence! this is the fourth sentence? no, this is the fourth sentence.";
$text = sentence_cap(". ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("! ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("? ",$text);
echo $text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence! This is the fourth sentence? No, this is the fourth sentence.
?>
Ken Kehler
15-Mar-2007 05:03
15-Mar-2007 05:03
@ zee: this should solve your !, ?, and any punctuations you want to add. It can probably be cleaned up a bit.
<?php
function sentence_cap($impexp, $sentence_split) {
$textbad=explode($impexp, $sentence_split);
$newtext = array();
foreach ($textbad as $sentence) {
$sentencegood=ucfirst($sentence);
$newtext[] = $sentencegood;
}
$textgood = implode($impexp, $newtext);
return $textgood;
}
$text = "this is a sentence. this is another sentence! this is the fourth sentence? no, this is the fourth sentence.";
$text = sentence_cap(". ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("! ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("? ",$text);
echo $text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence! This is the fourth sentence? No, this is the fourth sentence.
?>
zee
31-Jan-2007 09:09
31-Jan-2007 09:09
Another way to capitalize first letter of every sentence in a text, I hope it will help someone. It won't convert non-English characters, though, and ignores sentences ending with ! or ? etc.
<?php
$text="this is a sentence. this is another sentence.";
$split=explode(". ", $text);
foreach ($split as $sentence) {
$sentencegood=ucfirst($sentence);
$text=str_replace($sentence, $sentencegood, $text);
}
echo $text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence.
?>
Carel at divers information with dotcom
06-Jan-2007 07:55
06-Jan-2007 07:55
I made a small change. Now it takes care of points in numbers
function ucsentence ($string){
$string = explode ('.', $string);
$count = count ($string);
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++){
$string[$i] = ucfirst (trim ($string[$i]));
if ($i > 0){
if ((ord($string[$i]{0})<48) || (ord($string[$i]{0})>57)) {
$string[$i] = ' ' . $string[$i];
}
}
}
$string = implode ('.', $string);
return $string;
}
26-Oct-2006 11:45
Some simple function for cyrillic and latin letters both:
function rucfirst($str) {
if(ord(substr($str,0,1))<192) return ucfirst($str);
else
return chr(ord(substr($str,0,1))-32).substr($str,1);
}
Michael
12-Sep-2006 10:01
12-Sep-2006 10:01
This is what you would expect php to deliver if there was a built-in function named ucsentence.
function ucsentence ($string){
$string = explode ('.', $string);
$count = count ($string);
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++){
$string[$i] = ucfirst (trim ($string[$i]));
if ($i > 0){
$string[$i] = ' ' . $string[$i];
}
}
$string = implode ('.', $string);
return $string;
}
Northie
05-Sep-2006 08:39
05-Sep-2006 08:39
Sentence Case:
<?php
function SentenceCase($str) {
$sentences = explode(". ",$str);
for($i=0;$i<count($sentences);$i++) {
$sentences[$i][0] = strtoupper($sentences[$i][0]);
}
return implode(". ",$sentences);
}
?>
27-Jul-2006 06:31
lcfirst - In case you need to get the original string back after a ucfirst.
function lcfirst( $str ) {
$str[0] = strtolower($str[0]);
return $str;
}
Markus Ernst
31-Mar-2006 05:34
31-Mar-2006 05:34
A combination of the below functions to enable ucfirst for multibyte strings in a shared hosting environment (where you can not always count on mbstring to be installed):
<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str, $e='utf-8') {
if (function_exists('mb_strtoupper')) {
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $e), $e);
return $fc.mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $e), $e);
}
else {
$str = utf8_decode($str);
$str[0] = strtr($str[0],
"abcdefghýijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
"\x9C\x9A\xE0\xE1\xE2\xE3".
"\xE4\xE5\xE6\xE7\xE8\xE9".
"\xEA\xEB\xEC\xED\xEE\xEF".
"\xF0\xF1\xF2\xF3\xF4\xF5".
"\xF6\xF8\xF9\xFA\xFB\xFC".
"\xFE\xFF",
"ABCDEFGHÝIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
"\x8C\x8A\xC0\xC1\xC2\xC3\xC4".
"\xC5\xC6\xC7\xC8\xC9\xCA\xCB".
"\xCC\xCD\xCE\xCF\xD0\xD1\xD2".
"\xD3\xD4\xD5\xD6\xD8\xD9\xDA".
"\xDB\xDC\xDE\x9F");
return utf8_encode($str);
}
}
?>
Bartuc
27-Feb-2006 10:28
27-Feb-2006 10:28
Here is the fixed function for Turkish alphabet..
<?php
function uc_first($str){
$str[0] = strtr($str,
"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
"\x9C\x9A\xE0\xE1\xE2\xE3".
"\xE4\xE5\xE6\xE7\xE8\xE9".
"\xEA\xEB\xEC\xED\xEE\xEF".
"\xF0\xF1\xF2\xF3\xF4\xF5".
"\xF6\xF8\xF9\xFA\xFB\xFC".
"\xFE\xFF",
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
"\x8C\x8A\xC0\xC1\xC2\xC3\xC4".
"\xC5\xC6\xC7\xC8\xC9\xCA\xCB".
"\xCC\xCD\xCE\xCF\xD0\xD1\xD2".
"\xD3\xD4\xD5\xD6\xD8\xD9\xDA".
"\xDB\xDC\xDE\x9F");
return $str;
}
?>
Markus Ernst
12-Jan-2006 11:39
12-Jan-2006 11:39
plemieux' function did not work for me without passing the encoding to every single mb function (despite ini_set('default_charset', 'utf-8') at the top of the script). This is the example that works in my application (PHP 4.3):
<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str, $e='utf-8') {
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $e), $e);
return $fc.mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $e), $e);
}
?>
plemieux
30-Sep-2005 03:05
30-Sep-2005 03:05
Simple multi-bytes ucfirst():
<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str) {
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1));
return $fc.mb_substr($str, 1);
}
?>
info [at] spwdesign [dot] com
23-Jun-2005 04:48
23-Jun-2005 04:48
This is a simple code to get all the 'bad words', stored in a database, out of the text. You could use str_ireplace but since that's installed on PHP5 only, this works as well. It strtolowers the text first then places capitals with ucfirst() where it thinks a capital should be placed, at a new sentence. The previous sentence is ended by '. ' then.
<?php
function filter($text){
$filters=mysql_query("SELECT word,result FROM filter");
while($filter=mysql_fetch_array($filters)){
$text=str_replace($filter[word],$filter[result],strtolower($text));
$parts=explode(". ",$text);
for($i=0;$i<count($parts);$i++){
$parts[$i]=ucfirst($parts[$i]);
}
$text=implode(". ",$parts);
}
return $text;
}
?>
13-Mar-2005 10:11
Ah, the last code were spoiled, here is the fixed one:
<?php
function uc_first($str){
$str[0] = strtr($str,
"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
"\x9C\x9A\xE0\xE1\xE2\xE3".
"\xE4\xE5\xE6\xE7\xE8\xE9".
"\xEA\xEB\xEC\xED\xEE\xEF".
"\xF0\xF1\xF2\xF3\xF4\xF5".
"\xF6\xF8\xF9\xFA\xFB\xFC".
"\xFD\xFE\xFF",
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
"\x8C\x8A\xC0\xC1\xC2\xC3\xC4".
"\xC5\xC6\xC7\xC8\xC9\xCA\xCB".
"\xCC\xCD\xCE\xCF\xD0\xD1\xD2".
"\xD3\xD4\xD5\xD6\xD8\xD9\xDA".
"\xDB\xDC\xDD\xDE\x9F");
return $str;
}
?>
So, this function changes also other letters into uppercase, ucfirst() does only change: a-z to: A-Z.
Stig-Arne Grnroos
26-Dec-2004 03:46
26-Dec-2004 03:46
This function does not work as expected with characters from non-English alphabets (I only tested it with scandinavian letters, => ). It leaves them as lowercase.
Someone already commented that the function doesn't work on html entities, which is somewhat understandable. This bug however takes place before I convert the strings to html.
steven at tux dot appstate dot edu
22-Jun-2004 04:14
22-Jun-2004 04:14
Note: the return for this function changed in versions 4.3 when a string is passed of length 0. In <4.2 false is returned and in >4.3 a string of length 0 is returned.
Example:
$name = ucfirst("");
var_dump($name);
$name = ucfirst("owen");
var_dump($name);
Results for <4.2:
bool(false) string(4) "Owen"
Results for >4.3:
string(0) "" string(4) "Owen"
Ami Hughes (ami at mistress dot name)
08-Apr-2004 12:34
08-Apr-2004 12:34
In the event you sort of need multiple delimiters to apply the same action to, you can preg_replace this "second delimiter" enveloping it with your actual delimiter.
A for instance, would be if you wanted to use something like Lee's FormatName function in an input box designed for their full name as this script was only designed to check the last name as if it were the entire string. The problem is that you still want support for double-barreled names and you still want to be able to support the possibility that if the second part of the double-barreled name starts with "mc", that it will still be formatted correctly.
This example does a preg_replace that surrounds the separator with your actual delimiter. This is just a really quick alternative to writing some bigger fancier blah-blah function. If there's a shorter, simpler way to do it, feel free to inform me. (Emphasis on shorter and simpler because that was the whole point of this.) :D
Here's the example. I've removed Lee's comments as not to confuse them with my own.
<?php
function FormatName($name=NULL)
{
if (empty($name))
return false;
$name = strtolower($name);
$name = preg_replace("[\-]", " - ",$name); // Surround hyphens with our delimiter so our strncmp is accurate
if (preg_match("/^[a-z]{2,}$/i",$name)) // Simple preg_match if statement
{
$names_array = explode(' ',$name); // Set the delimiter as a space.
for ($i = 0; $i < count($names_array); $i++)
{
if (strncmp($names_array[$i],'mc',2) == 0 || ereg('^[oO]\'[a-zA-Z]',$names_array[$i]))
{
$names_array[$i][2] = strtoupper($names_array[$i][2]);
}
$names_array[$i] = ucfirst($names_array[$i]);
}
$name = implode(' ',$names_array);
$name = preg_replace("[ \- ]", "-",$name); // Remove the extra instances of our delimiter
return ucwords($name);
}
}
?>
lazaro_tolentino at hotmail dot com
02-Apr-2004 06:16
02-Apr-2004 06:16
this is a advance ucfirst function, for upper especifics words, with config in array of seperator
/**
* @return string
* @param string $str frase que passar pelo parce
* @desc Pega uma frase e devolve a mesma com as palavras com suas
* maiusculas obedecendo um criterio configurado no array $string_sep
*
* @since 2004-04-01 15:04 adicionado a variavel $tring_sep que um
* array contendo todos os separadores a serem usados
*/
function str_upper_lower($str)
{
/**
* array contendo todos os separadores
*/
$string_sep=array(' ','-','/','_','.');
/**
* coloca todas as palavras com letras minusculas
*/
$str=strtolower($str);
/**
* testa todos os separadores
*/
for ($i=0;$i<count($string_sep);$i++)
{
$sep=$string_sep[$i];
/**
* separa a frase usando os separador atual
*/
$array_words = explode($sep, $str);
/**
* variavel que conter o valor temporario
*/
$tmp_str = '';
$i2=0;
foreach ($array_words as $word)
{
/**
* se a quantidade de caracteres for maior que dois, ou se conter ponto,
* devolve upper da primeira letra
*/
$tmp_str .=(strlen($word)>2 || strpos($word,'.')?ucfirst($word):$word);
/**
* no adiciona o separador no fim de strings
*/
if ($i2<count($array_words)-1)
{
$tmp_str .= $sep;
}
$i2++;
}
$str = $tmp_str;
}
return $str;
}
Lee Benson
06-Mar-2004 07:37
06-Mar-2004 07:37
Here's a function I threw together when needing to validate name entries (both first name and last name).
This allows simple formatting for names prefixed with "Mc" (like McDonald, McCulloch, etc) and names prefixed with O (like O'Reilly, O'Conner, etc)..
It also allows double-barrelled names to be formatted correctly, in the Smith-Jones way.
Here's the function...
<?php
function FormatName($name=NULL) {
/* Formats a first or last name, and returns the formatted
version */
if (empty($name))
return false;
// Initially set the string to lower, to work on it
$name = strtolower($name);
// Run through and uppercase any multi-barrelled names
$names_array = explode('-',$name);
for ($i = 0; $i < count($names_array); $i++) {
// "McDonald", "O'Conner"..
if (strncmp($names_array[$i],'mc',2) == 0 || ereg('^[oO]\'[a-zA-Z]',$names_array[$i])) {
$names_array[$i][2] = strtoupper($names_array[$i][2]);
}
// Always set the first letter to uppercase, no matter what
$names_array[$i] = ucfirst($names_array[$i]);
}
// Piece the names back together
$name = implode('-',$names_array);
// Return upper-casing on all missed (but required) elements of the $name var
return ucwords($name);
}
?>
If you have any other "rules" to follow for international/foreign naming rules, you can add them to the foreach loop, and it should still follow all of the other rules.
It's a quick fix, but it seems to do the job nicely.
Examples...
<?php
$name = "o'cONNER-MCdOnAld";
echo FormatName($name);
?>
Returns: O'Conner-McDonald
05-Mar-2004 02:46
Of course ucfirst() will _not_ convert html entities such as ü (u-Umlaut as ) to Ü which would represent .
bkimble at ebaseweb dot com
09-Jun-2003 09:02
09-Jun-2003 09:02
Here is a handy function that makes the first letter of everything in a sentence upercase. I used it to deal with titles of events posted on my website ... I've added exceptions for uppercase words and lowercase words so roman numeral "IV" doesn't get printed as "iv" and words like "a" and "the" and "of" stay lowercase.
function RemoveShouting($string)
{
$lower_exceptions = array(
"to" => "1", "a" => "1", "the" => "1", "of" => "1"
);
$higher_exceptions = array(
"I" => "1", "II" => "1", "III" => "1", "IV" => "1",
"V" => "1", "VI" => "1", "VII" => "1", "VIII" => "1",
"XI" => "1", "X" => "1"
);
$words = split(" ", $string);
$newwords = array();
foreach ($words as $word)
{
if (!$higher_exceptions[$word])
$word = strtolower($word);
if (!$lower_exceptions[$word])
$word = ucfirst($word);
array_push($newwords, $word);
}
return join(" ", $newwords);
}