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ucwords> <trim
[edit] Last updated: Fri, 26 Apr 2013

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ucfirst

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

ucfirstMake 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!
?>

See Also



ucwords> <trim
[edit] Last updated: Fri, 26 Apr 2013
 
add a note add a note User Contributed Notes ucfirst - [40 notes]
up
5
Ami Hughes (ami at mistress dot name)
9 years ago
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);
          
       }
   }

?>
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2
Quicker
1 year ago
if you want to ucfirst for utf8 try this one:

<?php
function ucfirst_utf8($stri){
 if(
$stri{0}>="\xc3")
     return ((
$stri{1}>="\xa0")?
     (
$stri{0}.chr(ord($stri{1})-32)):
     (
$stri{0}.$stri{1})).substr($stri,2);
 else return
ucfirst($stri);
}
?>

It is quick, not language (but utf8) dependend and does not use any mb-functions such as mb_ucfirst.
up
2
prokur.net - there is my email
4 years ago
I believe that mb_ucfirst will be soon added in PHP, but for now this could be useful
<?php

if (!function_exists('mb_ucfirst') && function_exists('mb_substr')) {
    function
mb_ucfirst($string) {
       
$string = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($string, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($string, 1);
        return
$string;
    }
}

?>

it also check is mb support enabled or not
up
2
plemieux
7 years ago
Simple multi-bytes ucfirst():

<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str) {
   
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1));
    return
$fc.mb_substr($str, 1);
}
?>
up
1
pete at namecube dot net
3 years ago
for anyone wanting to ucfirst each word in a sentence this works for me:

<?php
function ucfirst_sentence($str)
{
    return
preg_replace('/\b(\w)/e', 'strtoupper("$1")', $str);
}
?>
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1
wilfried dot loche at fr dot adp dot com
3 years ago
If someone looks for the equivalent on Oracle DB, here it is: INITCAP. Hope this helps!
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1
svetoslavm at gmail dot com
4 years ago
For some reason this worked for me.

Mac OS 10.5.1
PHP 5.2.6

<?php
  
/**
     * ucfirst UTF-8 aware function
     *
     * @param string $string
     * @return string
     * @see http://ca.php.net/ucfirst
     */
   
function my_ucfirst($string, $e ='utf-8') {
        if (
function_exists('mb_strtoupper') && function_exists('mb_substr') && !empty($string)) {
           
$string = mb_strtolower($string, $e);
           
$upper = mb_strtoupper($string, $e);
           
preg_match('#(.)#us', $upper, $matches);
           
$string = $matches[1] . mb_substr($string, 1, mb_strlen($string, $e), $e);
        } else {
           
$string = ucfirst($string);
        }
        return
$string;
    }
?>

Svetoslav Marinov
http://slavi.biz
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1
webmaster at onmyway dot cz
5 years ago
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);
}
?>
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1
adefoor at gmail dot com
5 years ago
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.

?>
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1
Bartuc
7 years ago
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;
}

?>
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1
Anonymous
8 years ago
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.
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4
charliefortune
5 years ago
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);
    }

?>
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1
mattalexxpub at gmail dot com
4 years ago
This is what I use for converting strings to sentence case:

<?php
function sentence_case($string) {
   
$sentences = preg_split('/([.?!]+)/', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY|PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
   
$new_string = '';
    foreach (
$sentences as $key => $sentence) {
       
$new_string .= ($key & 1) == 0?
           
ucfirst(strtolower(trim($sentence))) :
           
$sentence.' ';
    }
    return
trim($new_string);
}

print
sentence_case('HMM. WOW! WHAT?');

// Outputs: "Hmm. Wow! What?"
?>
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1
Anonymous
6 years ago
lcfirst - In case you need to get the original string back after a ucfirst.

    function lcfirst( $str ) {
        $str[0] = strtolower($str[0]);
        return $str;
    }
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1
Markus Ernst
7 years ago
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);
    }
}
?>
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0
Nethor
6 months ago
Simple but workable solution:

<?php
mb_internal_encoding
("UTF-8");  // before calling the function

function utf8_ucfirst($str){
   
preg_match_all("~^(.)(.*)$~u", $str, $arr);
    return
mb_strtoupper($arr[1][0]).$arr[2][0];
    }
?>
up
0
vlknmtn at gmail dot com
1 year ago
Turkish solution:

<?php
mb_internal_encoding
("UTF-8");
mb_regex_encoding("UTF-8");

function
tr_ilkbuyuk($text)
{
   
$text = str_replace("I","ı",$text);
   
$text = mb_strtolower($text, 'UTF-8');
   
    if(
$text[0] == "i")
       
$tr_text = "İ".substr($text, 1);
    else
       
$tr_text = mb_convert_case($text, MB_CASE_TITLE, "UTF-8");
   
    return
trim($tr_text);
}

function
tr_ucwords($text)
{
   
$p = explode(" ",$text);
    if(
is_array($p))
    {
       
$tr_text = "";
        foreach(
$p AS $item)
           
$tr_text .= " ".tr_ilkbuyuk($item);
           
        return
trim($tr_text);
    }
    else
        return
tr_ilkbuyuk($text);
}

$deger = "ıişllşlsdg";

echo
tr_ucwords($deger);

?>
up
0
octavius
3 years ago
For lithuanian text with utf-8 encoding I use two functions (thanks [mattalexxpub at gmail dot com] and Svetoslav Marinov)

<?php
function my_ucfirst($string, $e ='utf-8') {
    if (
function_exists('mb_strtoupper') && function_exists('mb_substr') && !empty($string)) {
       
$string = mb_strtolower($string, $e);
       
$upper = mb_strtoupper($string, $e);
           
preg_match('#(.)#us', $upper, $matches);
           
$string = $matches[1] . mb_substr($string, 1, mb_strlen($string, $e), $e);
    }
    else {
       
$string = ucfirst($string);
    }
    return
$string;
}

function
sentence_case($string) {
   
$sentences = preg_split('/([.?!]+)/', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY|PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
   
$new_string = '';
    foreach (
$sentences as $key => $sentence) {
       
$new_string .= ($key & 1) == 0?
           
my_ucfirst(strtolower(trim($sentence))) :
           
$sentence.' '
    }
    return
trim($new_string);
}
?>
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0
bgschool
3 years ago
Simple function for use ucfirst with utf-8 encoded cyrylic text

<?php
   
public function capitalize_first($str) {
       
$line = iconv("UTF-8", "Windows-1251", $str); // convert to windows-1251
       
$line = ucfirst($line);
       
$line = iconv("Windows-1251", "UTF-8", $line); // convert back to utf-8
       
       
return $line;
    }
?>
up
0
Uwe
5 years ago
@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.
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0
Carel at divers information with dotcom
6 years ago
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;
}
up
0
Michael
6 years ago
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] = '&nbsp;&nbsp;' . $string[$i];
        }
    }
    $string = implode ('.', $string);
    return $string;
}
up
0
Markus Ernst
7 years ago
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);
}
?>
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0
info [at] spwdesign [dot] com
7 years ago
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;
}
?>
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0
steven at tux dot appstate dot edu
8 years ago
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"
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0
bkimble at ebaseweb dot com
9 years ago
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); 
}
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-1
idont at remember dot it
11 months ago
In case you need a French version of ucfirst:

"été indien" => "Eté indien"
"ça va?" => "Ça va?"

<?php
function frenchUcfirst($v) {
 
$lowCase  = "\\xE0\\xE1\\xE2\\xE3\\xE4\\xE5\\xE7\\xE8\\xE9\\xEA\\xEB\\xEC\\xED\\xEE\\xEF";
 
$lowCase .= "\\xF1\\xF2\\xF3\\xF4\\xF5\\xF6\\xF8\\xF9\\xFA\\xFB\\xFC\\xFD\\xFF\\u0161";
 
$upperCase = "AAAAAA\\xC7EEEEIIIINOOOOOOUUUUYYS";
  return
strtoupper(strtr(substr($v, 0, 1), $lowCase, $upperCase)) . substr($v, 1);
}
?>

Note:
- Latin non french accented characters follow the same rule:
"ändå" => "Andå"
- Non ASCII characters in the function are in HEX format to avoid encoding issue...
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-1
Ken Kehler
6 years ago
@ 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.

?>
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-1
Martynas
11 months ago
This function is multilanguage. It converts only the first character of the string to uppercase (UTF-8). Other chars in string will be unchanged.
Usage: my_ucfirst("šlepetės ABC 123 abc");
// Returns Šlepetės ABC 123 abc

<?php
function substr_unicode($str, $s, $l = null) {
    return
join("", array_slice(
       
preg_split("//u", $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY), $s, $l));
}

function
my_ucfirst($string, $e ='utf-8') {
       
$orig_string = $string;
        if (
function_exists('mb_strtoupper') && function_exists('mb_substr') && !empty($string)) {
           
$string = mb_strtolower($string, $e);
           
$upper = mb_strtoupper($string, $e);
           
preg_match('#(.)#us', $upper, $matches);
           
$string = $matches[1] . mb_substr($string, 1, mb_strlen($string, $e), $e);
        } else {
           
$string = ucfirst($string);
        }
       
       
$string1 = substr_unicode($string, 0, 1);
       
$string2 = substr_unicode($orig_string, 1);
       
$string = $string1 . $string2;
       
        return
$string;
    }
?>
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-1
qeremy [atta] gmail [dotta] com
1 year ago
A proper Turkish solution;

<?php
function ucfirst_turkish($str) {
   
$tmp = preg_split("//u", $str, 2, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
    return
mb_convert_case(
       
str_replace("i", "İ", $tmp[0]), MB_CASE_TITLE, "UTF-8").
       
$tmp[1];
}

$str = "iyilik güzelLİK";
echo
ucfirst($str) ."\n";   // Iyilik güzelLİK
echo ucfirst_turkish($str); // İyilik güzelLİK
?>
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-1
chris at bjelleklang dot org
2 years ago
For those who want a multibyte-compliant ucfirst() without wanting to mess with encodings, this should do the trick:

<?php
function mb_ucasefirst($str){
   
$str[0] = mb_strtoupper($str[0]);
    return
$str;
}
?>
up
-1
8 years ago
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.
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-1
lazaro_tolentino at hotmail dot com
9 years ago
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;
}
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-1
Lee Benson
9 years ago
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
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-1
Anonymous
9 years ago
Of course ucfirst() will _not_ convert html entities such as &uuml; (u-Umlaut as ) to &Uuml; which would represent .
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-2
drpain at webster dot org dot za
1 year ago
<?php

// Custom function returns a string with the first word in a bigger fontsize, with a default of 22px.

function ucsentance($string, $fontSize=22) {

 
// Do some basic processing on the data and find the first space before returning the modified string.
 
$trimmed = trim($string);
 
$getSpace = strpos($trimmed,' ');    
 
$firstWord = substr($trimmed, 0, $getSpace);
 
$firstWord = ucfirst($firstWord);  
 
$afterFirstWord = substr($trimmed, $getSpace);
 
$output = "<b style='font-size: " . $fontSize . "px;'>" . $firstWord . "</b>" . $afterFirstWord;
  return
$output;
}

// Example of it's use
$string = "Hello World, I am a bouncy castle!";
echo
ucsentance($string);
?>

This will yield <b style="font-size: 22px;">Hello</b> World, I am a bouncy castle!
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-2
Anonymous
6 years ago
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);
}
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-2
zee
6 years ago
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.

?>
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-2
Northie
6 years ago
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);
}

?>
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-3
NoName
5 years ago
For strings with diactrical marks (umlauts, etc.), consider mb_convert_case().

 
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