Thread: capitalizing only first letter in strings??

I am trying to take a users input and then use a loop to loop through each individual character in the string the user has inputted. Then while it loops through it capitalizes the first letter only leaving the others lowercase unless it reaches a space before a character then I want to capitalize the character following the space.

For ex.

Someone enters in north dakota

it loops through, capitalizes the n. keeps looping through each char until it reaches the space, then checks for a character after that and if it finds a character after that it will capitalize it

so the end result is: North Dakota.

But at the same time I want it to lower case it if a user enters in all caps like

NORTH DAKOTA

but leave the first letters capitalized.

Is the toupper() function a proper one to use here? Basically loop through capitalizing the first letter regardless and also if the character follows a space while keeping the rest lowercase.

if someone can guide me in the right direction i'd appreciate it . . thanks

Create a function "capitalize(char *str)" and use a boolean flag to mark if you are in a word or outside a word. If word == false, call toupper() and set word to true. If *str == ' ' set word to false, else call tolower().

well here is what I have so far

Code:

               void strCase(char s[])
               {
                    int i;
                    while (s[i] != NULL)
                    {
                          i = toupper(s[i]);
                          i++;
                    }
               }

I am just testing to see if this will capitalize all letters , getting an error right now but am I on the right track?

Using i as the index should assign it to s[i]. So instead of "i = toupper(s[i]);" try: "s[i] = toupper(s[i]);"

This should make everything uppercase. You need some if statements in there looking for (s[i] == ' ') and if this is true, take appropriate action.

Simple nasty trick...

1) convert the entire string to lower case in a loop.
2) Find the spaces and convert the character after to upper case.

Nice an easy....

The function you have there should work to capitalize the entire string. You need to keep track if your index is a blank, you can test this with: if( s[i] == ' ' )

And if you think about it, you should always call tolower(), except if your character is the first after a space.

Originally Posted by cprogrammer1980

should I do this using an 'if' statement?

Code:

int strCase(char s[])
               {
                    int i=0;
                    while (s[i])
                    {
                          s[i] = toupper(s[i]);
                          i++;
                          }
                    return 0;
               }

this is what I have so far I am toying around with making it all CAPS, the code compiles but it isnt converting them for some reason

This is UNTESTED code. It's only to show concept...

Code:

void strcase(char *str)
  { int x, y;  // loop variables
     char *ucp;  // upper case pointer 
     y = strlen(str);
     // convert to all lower case
     for( x = 0;  x < y; x++)
       {  str[x] = tolower(str[x]); }
    // capitalize words
    ucp = str;
    while (ucp = strchr(ucp,' '))
       { ++ ucp;
           *ucp = toupper(*ucp);}  }

Of course this won't work if there are multiple spaces between words... but removing them is a whole other problem.

Alternatively you can use flags as I mentioned earlier, this is the basic idea of that.

Code:

void capitalize(char *str) {
    bool word = false;
    char *end = str + strlen(str);
    for(; str < end; str++){
        if( *str == ' ' ){
            word = false;
        } else if( word == false ) {
            *str = toupper(*str);
            word = true;
        }
        else {
            *str = tolower(*str);
        }
    }
}

I see, It doesn't say anything about more than one space so that is fine but
question as to why you made strcase void?

Does it automatically do the conversions despite not being called anywhere else in the code or will I have to call strcase() somewhere in my code?

You need to call it yourself, after that it will change the string in-place, no need to return anything.

Originally Posted by cprogrammer1980

I see, It doesn't say anything about more than one space so that is fine but
question as to why you made strcase void?

Because it doesn't return anything.

Does it automatically do the conversions despite not being called anywhere else in the code or will I have to call strcase() somewhere in my code?

You're kidding right?
No function does anything without being called...

You call it as...

Code:

strcase(StringToBeFancyCapped);

I see, I have one function that takes in the input from the user a second function that re-displays the user input so my guess would be to call it in that second function so it re-displays the input starting with a capital letter.

Also in the code you posted, what is the difference between char *str and char s[] because I am passing in char s[] from the input function and I am not familiar with what the asterisk stands for. Sorry I am still a bit of a noob