How do I make the first letter of a string uppercase in JavaScript?

Question

How do I make the first letter of a string uppercase, but not change the case of any of the other letters?

For example:

• \"this is a test\"

Answer 1

If you're already (or considering) using lodash, the solution is easy:

_.upperFirst('fred');
// => 'Fred'

_.upperFirst('FRED');
// => 'FRED'

_.capitalize('fred') //=> 'Fred'

See their docs: https://lodash.com/docs#capitalize

_.camelCase('Foo Bar'); //=> 'fooBar'

https://lodash.com/docs/4.15.0#camelCase

_.lowerFirst('Fred');
// => 'fred'

_.lowerFirst('FRED');
// => 'fRED'

_.snakeCase('Foo Bar');
// => 'foo_bar'

Vanilla js for first upper case:

function upperCaseFirst(str){
    return str.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + str.substring(1);
}

Answer 2

String.prototype.capitalize = function(allWords) {
   return (allWords) ? // if all words
      this.split(' ').map(word => word.capitalize()).join(' ') : //break down phrase to words then  recursive calls until capitalizing all words
      this.charAt(0).toUpperCase() + this.slice(1); // if allWords is undefined , capitalize only the first word , mean the first char of the whole string
}

And then:

 "capitalize just the first word".capitalize(); ==> "Capitalize just the first word"
 "capitalize all words".capitalize(true); ==> "Capitalize All Words"

Update Nov.2016 (ES6), just for FUN :

const capitalize = (string = '') => [...string].map(    //convert to array with each item is a char of string by using spread operator (...)
    (char, index) => index ? char : char.toUpperCase()  // index true means not equal 0 , so (!index) is the first char which is capitalized by `toUpperCase()` method
 ).join('')                                             //return back to string

then capitalize("hello") // Hello

Answer 3

It seems to be easier in CSS:

<style type="text/css">
    p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}
</style>
<p class="capitalize">This is some text.</p>

This is from CSS text-transform Property (at W3Schools).

Answer 4

Here is a shortened version of the popular answer that gets the first letter by treating the string as an array:

function capitalize(s)
{
    return s[0].toUpperCase() + s.slice(1);
}

Update:

According to the comments below this doesn't work in IE 7 or below.

Update 2:

To avoid undefined for empty strings (see @njzk2's comment below), you can check for an empty string:

function capitalize(s)
{
    return s && s[0].toUpperCase() + s.slice(1);
}

Answer 5

var capitalized = yourstring[0].toUpperCase() + yourstring.substr(1);

Answer 6

yourString.replace(/^[a-z]/, function(m){ return m.toUpperCase() });

(You may encapsulate it in a function or even add it to the String prototype if you use it frequently.)