How can I capitalize the first letter of each word? [closed] - language-agnostic

Question

Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 1 year ago.
Improve this question
I need a script in any language to capitalize the first letter of every word in a file.

Answer 1

In Python, open('file.txt').read().title() should suffice.

Answer 2

Using the non-standard (Gnu extension) sed utility from the command line:
sed -i '' -r 's/\b(.)/\U\1/g' file.txt
Get rid of the "-i" if you don't want it to modify the file in-place.
note that you should not use this in portable scripts

Answer 3

C#:
string foo = "bar baz";
foo = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(foo);
//foo = Bar Baz

Answer 4

From the shell, using ruby, this works assuming your input file is called FILENAME, and it should preserve all existing file formatting - it doesn't collapse the spacing as some other solutions might:
cat FILENAME | ruby -n -e 'puts $_.gsub(/^[a-z]|\s+[a-z]/) { |a| a.upcase }'

Answer 5

Scala:
scala> "hello world" split(" ") map(_.capitalize) mkString(" ")
res0: String = Hello World
or well, given that the input should be a file:
import scala.io.Source
Source.fromFile("filename").getLines.map(_ split(" ") map(_.capitalize) mkString(" "))

Answer 6

bash:
$ X=(hello world)
$ echo ${X[#]^}
Hello World

Answer 7

You can do it with Ruby too, using the command line format in a terminal:
cat FILENAME | ruby -n -e 'puts gsub(/\b\w/, &:upcase)'
Or:
ruby -e 'puts File.read("FILENAME").gsub(/\b\w/, &:upcase)'

Answer 8

A simple perl script that does this: (via http://www.go4expert.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2138)
sub ucwords {
$str = shift;
$str = lc($str);
$str =~ s/\b(\w)/\u$1/g;
return $str;
}
while (<STDIN>) {
print ucwords $_;
}
Then you call it with
perl ucfile.pl < srcfile.txt > outfile.txt

Answer 9

This is done in PHP.
$string = "I need a script in any language to capitalize the first letter of every word in a file."
$cap = ucwords($string);

Answer 10

VB.Net:
Dim sr As System.IO.StreamReader = New System.IO.StreamReader("c:\lowercase.txt")
Dim str As String = sr.ReadToEnd()
sr.Close()
str = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(str)
Dim sw As System.IO.StreamWriter = New System.IO.StreamWriter("c:\TitleCase.txt")
sw.Write(str)
sw.Close()

Answer 11

php uses ucwords($string) or ucwords('all of this will start with capitals') to do the trick. so you can just open up a file and get the data and then use this function:
<?php
$file = "test.txt";
$data = fopen($file, 'r');
$allData = fread($data, filesize($file));
fclose($fh);
echo ucwords($allData);
?>
Edit, my code got cut off. Sorry.

Answer 12

Here's another Ruby solution, using Ruby's nice little one-line scripting helpers (automatic reading of input files etc.)
ruby -ni~ -e "puts $_.gsub(/\b\w+\b/) { |word| word.capitalize }" foo.txt
(Assuming your text is stored in a file named foo.txt.)
Best used with Ruby 1.9 and its awesome multi-language support if your text contains non-ASCII characters.

Answer 13

ruby:
irb> foo = ""; "foo bar".split.each { |x| foo += x.capitalize + " " }
=> ["foo", "bar"]
irb> foo
=> "Foo Bar "

Answer 14

In ruby:
str.gsub(/^[a-z]|\s+[a-z]/) { |a| a.upcase }
hrm, actually this is nicer:
str.each(' ') {|word| puts word.capitalize}

Answer 15

perl:
$ perl -e '$foo = "foo bar"; $foo =~ s/\b(\w)/uc($1)/ge; print $foo;'
Foo Bar

Answer 16

Although it was mentioned in the comments, nobody ever posted the awk approach to this problem:
$ cat output.txt
this is my first sentence. and this is the second sentence. that one is the third.
$
$ awk '{for (i=0;i<=NF;i++) {sub(".", substr(toupper($i), 1,1) , $i)}} {print}' output.txt
This Is My First Sentence. And This Is The Second Sentence. That One Is The Third.
Explanation
We loop through fields and capitalize the first letter of each word. If field separator was not a space, we could define it with -F "\t", -F "_" or whatever.

Answer 17

zsh solution
#!/bin/zsh
mystring="vb.net lOOKS very unsexy"
echo "${(C)mystring}"
Vb.Net Looks Very Unsexy
Note it does CAP after every non alpha character, see VB.Net .

Answer 18

Very basic version for AMOS Basic on the Amiga — only treats spaces as word separators though. I'm sure there is a better way using PEEK and POKE, but my memory is rather rusty with anything beyond 15 years.
FILE$=Fsel$("*.txt")
Open In 1,FILE$
Input #1,STR$
STR$=Lower$(STR$)
L=Len($STR)
LAST$=" "
NEW$=""
For I=0 to L-1
CUR$=MID$(STR$,I,1)
If LAST$=" "
NEW$=NEW$+Upper$(CUR$)
Else
NEW$=NEW$+$CUR$
Endif
LAST$=$CUR$
Next
Close 1
Print NEW$
I miss good old AMOS, a great language to learn with... pretty ugly though, heh.

Answer 19

Another solution with awk, pretending to be simpler instead of being shorter ;)
$ cat > file
thanks for all the fish
^D
$ awk 'function tocapital(str) {
if(length(str) > 1)
return toupper(substr(str, 1, 1)) substr(str,2)
else
return toupper(str)
}
{
for (i=1;i<=NF;i++)
printf("%s%s", tocapital($i), OFS);
printf ORS
}
' < file
Thanks For All The Fish

Answer 20

If using pipes and Python:
$ echo "HELLO WORLD" | python3 -c "import sys; print(sys.stdin.read().title())"
Hello World
For example:
$ lorem | python3 -c "import sys; print(sys.stdin.read().title())"
Officia Est Omnis Quia. Nihil Et Voluptatem Dolor Blanditiis Sit Harum. Dolore Minima Suscipit Quaerat. Soluta Autem Explicabo Saepe. Recusandae Molestias Et Et Est Impedit Consequuntur. Voluptatum Architecto Enim Nostrum Ut Corrupti Nobis.
You can also use things like strip() to remove spaces, or capitalize():
$ echo " This iS mY USER ${USER} " | python3 -c "import sys; print(sys.stdin.read().strip().lower().capitalize())"
This is my user jenkins