Simple multi-bytes ucfirst():
<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str) {
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1));
return $fc.mb_substr($str, 1);
}
?>
ucfirst
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
ucfirst — Make a string's first character uppercase
Description
Returns a string with the first character of
string capitalized, if that character is
an ASCII character in the range from "a" (0x61) to
"z" (0x7a).
Parameters
-
string -
The input string.
Return Values
Returns the resulting string.
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.2.0 | Case conversion no longer depends on the locale set with setlocale(). Only ASCII characters will be converted. |
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
- lcfirst() - Make a string's first character lowercase
- strtolower() - Make a string lowercase
- strtoupper() - Make a string uppercase
- ucwords() - Uppercase the first character of each word in a string
- mb_convert_case() - Perform case folding on a string
add a note
User Contributed Notes 35 notes
plemieux ¶
19 years ago
qeremy [atta] gmail [dotta] com ¶
12 years 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($str); // İyilik güzelLİK
?>
prokur.net - there is my email ¶
16 years ago
I believe that mb_ucfirst will be soon added in PHP, but for now this could be useful
<?php
if (!function_exists('mb_ucfirst') && function_exists('mb_substr')) {
function mb_ucfirst($string) {
$string = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($string, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($string, 1);
return $string;
}
}
?>
it also check is mb support enabled or not
mattalexxpub at gmail dot com ¶
16 years ago
This is what I use for converting strings to sentence case:
<?php
function sentence_case($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?"
?>
mingalevme at gmail dot com ¶
10 years ago
Implementation of multi-bytes ucfirst for "multiword"-strings (module mbstring is required):
<?php
public static function ucfirst($str)
{
$str = mb_strtolower($str);
$words = preg_split('/\b/u', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
foreach ($words as $word) {
$ucword = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($word, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($word, 1);
$str = str_replace($word, $ucword, $str);
}
return $str;
}
?>
Markus Ernst ¶
18 years ago
plemieux' function did not work for me without passing the encoding to every single mb function (despite ini_set('default_charset', 'utf-8') at the top of the script). This is the example that works in my application (PHP 4.3):
<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str, $e='utf-8') {
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $e), $e);
return $fc.mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $e), $e);
}
?>
charliefortune ¶
16 years ago
Here's a function to capitalize segments of a name, and put the rest into lower case. You can pass the characters you want to use as delimiters.
i.e. <?php echo nameize("john o'grady-smith"); ?>
returns John O'Grady-Smith
<?php
function nameize($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($string);
}
?>
kiprasbal at gmail dot com ¶
10 years ago
My version, converst first letter of the first word in the string to uppercase
public function mb_ucfirst($str) {
$aParts = explode(" ",$str);
$firstWord = mb_convert_case($aParts[0],MB_CASE_TITLE,"UTF-8");
unset($aParts[0]);
return $firstWord." ".implode(" ",$aParts);
}
svetoslavm at gmail dot com ¶
16 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 $string;
}
?>
Svetoslav Marinov
http://slavi.biz
bgschool ¶
15 years ago
Simple function for use ucfirst with utf-8 encoded cyrylic text
<?php
public function capitalize_first($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 $line;
}
?>
nospam at nospam dot com ¶
7 years ago
Improved method of capitalizing first characters of sentences.
The first two manipulations (double spaces & all caps) are optional so can be removed without harm.
<?php
// return string with first letters of sentences capitalized
function ucsentence($str) {
if ($str) { // input
$str = preg_replace('/'.chr(32).chr(32).'+/', chr(32), $str); // recursively replaces all double spaces with a space
if (($x = substr($str, 0, 10)) && ($x == strtoupper($x))) $str = strtolower($str); // sample of first 10 chars is ALLCAPS so convert $str to lowercase; if always done then any proper capitals would be lost
$na = array('. ', '! ', '? '); // punctuation needles
foreach ($na as $n) { // each punctuation needle
if (strpos($str, $n) !== false) { // punctuation needle found
$sa = explode($n, $str); // split
foreach ($sa as $s) $ca[] = ucfirst($s); // capitalize
$str = implode($n, $ca); // replace $str with rebuilt version
unset($ca); // clear for next loop
}
}
return ucfirst(trim($str)); // capitalize first letter in case no punctuation needles found
}
}
?>
"heLLo EarthLing!" >> "HeLLo EarthLing!"
"I'M MOSTLY. caps! " >> "I'm mostly. Caps!"
"ALLCAPS" >> "Allcaps"
"i haVe neST.ed punct,u.ation! sp A c es. and CAPs.. " >> "I haVe neST.ed punct,u.ation! Sp A c es. And CAPs.."
Bartuc ¶
18 years ago
Here is the fixed function for Turkish alphabet..
<?php
function uc_first($str){
$str[0] = strtr($str,
"abcdefgh?ijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
"\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",
"ABCDEFGHI?JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
"\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 $str;
}
?>
pete at namecube dot net ¶
14 years ago
for anyone wanting to ucfirst each word in a sentence this works for me:
<?php
function ucfirst_sentence($str)
{
return preg_replace('/\b(\w)/e', 'strtoupper("$1")', $str);
}
?>
octavius ¶
15 years ago
For lithuanian text with utf-8 encoding I use two functions (thanks [mattalexxpub at gmail dot com] and Svetoslav Marinov)
<?php
function my_ucfirst($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);
}
?>
Carel at divers information with dotcom ¶
17 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 $string;
}
Quicker ¶
13 years ago
if you want to ucfirst for utf8 try this one:
<?php
function ucfirst_utf8($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.
vlknmtn at gmail dot com ¶
13 years 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);
?>
bkimble at ebaseweb dot com ¶
21 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);
}
wilfried dot loche at fr dot adp dot com ¶
14 years ago
If someone looks for the equivalent on Oracle DB, here it is: INITCAP. Hope this helps!
adefoor at gmail dot com ¶
17 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 $text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence! This is the fourth sentence? No, this is the fourth sentence.
?>
Ekin ¶
4 years ago
Using this function for Turkish language is won't work because of multi-byte characters. But you can use some tricks:
<?php
function ucfirst_tr($str) {
$trMap = ['Ğ'=>'ğ','Ü'=>'ü','Ş'=>'ş','İ'=>'i','Ö'=>'ö','Ç'=>'ç','I'=>'ı'];
$str = mb_strtolower(strtr($str, $trMap));
$first = mb_substr($str, 0, 1);
$first = strtr($first, array_flip($trMap));
$first = mb_strtoupper($first);
return $first . mb_substr($str, 1);
}
?>
info [at] spwdesign [dot] com ¶
19 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 $text;
}
?>
Anonymous ¶
19 years ago
Ah, the last code were spoiled, here is the fixed one:
<?php
function uc_first($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.
steven at tux dot appstate dot edu ¶
20 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"
Ami Hughes (ami at mistress dot name) ¶
20 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($name);
}
}
?>
Nethor ¶
12 years ago
Simple but workable solution:
<?php
mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8"); // before calling the function
function utf8_ucfirst($str){
preg_match_all("~^(.)(.*)$~u", $str, $arr);
return mb_strtoupper($arr[1][0]).$arr[2][0];
}
?>
Ken Kehler ¶
17 years ago
@ zee: this should solve your !, ?, and any punctuations you want to add. It can probably be cleaned up a bit.
<?php
function sentence_cap($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 $text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence! This is the fourth sentence? No, this is the fourth sentence.
?>
webmaster at onmyway dot cz ¶
16 years ago
Inspired by the lcfirst function a simple mb_lcfirst to cope with multibyte strings:
<?php
function mb_lcfirst($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), $enc);
}
?>
Markus Ernst ¶
18 years ago
A combination of the below functions to enable ucfirst for multibyte strings in a shared hosting environment (where you can not always count on mbstring to be installed):
<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($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($str);
}
}
?>
Uwe ¶
17 years ago
@adefoor, Ken and Zee
Changing the case can only be done by understanding the text. Take for example "USA", "Sunday", "March", "I am ...", abbreviations like "prob." and so on.
Anonymous ¶
18 years ago
Some simple function for cyrillic and latin letters both:
function rucfirst($str) {
if(ord(substr($str,0,1))<192) return ucfirst($str);
else
return chr(ord(substr($str,0,1))-32).substr($str,1);
}
Anonymous ¶
7 years ago
Format the input string:
<?php
function ucsentences($string){
$parts = preg_split('/([^\.\!\?;]+[\.\!\?;"]+)/', strtolower($string), (-1), PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE|PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
$r = '';
foreach($parts as $key=>$sentence){
$r .= ucfirst(trim($sentence)) . ' ';
}
$r = preg_replace('/\bi\b/', 'I', $r);
$r = preg_replace_callback('/("[a-z])/', function($m){ return strtoupper($m[0]);}, $r);
return rtrim($r);
}
$str = 'i\'m not sure. if this is good enough, but i thought: "hey, who know\'s. maybe i am right."';
?>
Outputs:
I'm not sure. If this is good enough, but I thought: "Hey, who know's. Maybe I am right."
Michael ¶
18 years ago
This is what you would expect php to deliver if there was a built-in function named ucsentence.
function ucsentence ($string){
$string = explode ('.', $string);
$count = count ($string);
for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++){
$string[$i] = ucfirst (trim ($string[$i]));
if ($i > 0){
$string[$i] = ' ' . $string[$i];
}
}
$string = implode ('.', $string);
return $string;
}
divinity76 at gmail dot com ¶
5 years ago
here is how mb_ucfirst should be implemented in userland
<?php
function mb_ucfirst(string $str, string $encoding = null): string
{
if ($encoding === null) {
$encoding = mb_internal_encoding();
}
return mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $encoding), $encoding) . mb_substr($str, 1, null, $encoding);
}
?>
(when i wrote this comment, everybody else's attempt got it wrong for one reason or another, for example: some don't allow you to specify encoding, and some defaulted to utf-8 instead of defaulting to mb_internal_encoding() )
idont at remember dot it ¶
12 years ago
In case you need a French version of ucfirst:
"été indien" => "Eté indien"
"ça va?" => "Ça va?"
<?php
function frenchUcfirst($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...
