How to capitalize the first character of each word in a string

Question

Is there a function built into Java that capitalizes the first character of each word in a String, and does not affect the others?

Examples:

• jon

Answer 1

I decided to add one more solution for capitalizing words in a string:

• words are defined here as adjacent letter-or-digit characters;
• surrogate pairs are provided as well;
• the code has been optimized for performance; and
• it is still compact.

Function:

public static String capitalize(String string) {
  final int sl = string.length();
  final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(sl);
  boolean lod = false;
  for(int s = 0; s < sl; s++) {
    final int cp = string.codePointAt(s);
    sb.appendCodePoint(lod ? Character.toLowerCase(cp) : Character.toUpperCase(cp));
    lod = Character.isLetterOrDigit(cp);
    if(!Character.isBmpCodePoint(cp)) s++;
  }
  return sb.toString();
}

Example call:

System.out.println(capitalize("An à la carte StRiNg. Surrogate pairs:                                                                     

                                                        
            

Answer 2

1. Java 8 Streams

public static String capitalizeAll(String str) {
    if (str == null || str.isEmpty()) {
        return str;
    }

    return Arrays.stream(str.split("\\s+"))
            .map(t -> t.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase() + t.substring(1))
            .collect(Collectors.joining(" "));
}

Examples:

System.out.println(capitalizeAll("jon skeet")); // Jon Skeet
System.out.println(capitalizeAll("miles o'Brien")); // Miles O'Brien
System.out.println(capitalizeAll("old mcdonald")); // Old Mcdonald
System.out.println(capitalizeAll(null)); // null

For foo bAR to Foo Bar, replace the map() method with the following:

.map(t -> t.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase() + t.substring(1).toLowerCase())

2. String.replaceAll() (Java 9+)

ublic static String capitalizeAll(String str) {
    if (str == null || str.isEmpty()) {
        return str;
    }

    return Pattern.compile("\\b(.)(.*?)\\b")
            .matcher(str)
            .replaceAll(match -> match.group(1).toUpperCase() + match.group(2));
}

Examples:

System.out.println(capitalizeAll("12 ways to learn java")); // 12 Ways To Learn Java
System.out.println(capitalizeAll("i am atta")); // I Am Atta
System.out.println(capitalizeAll(null)); // null

3. Apache Commons Text

System.out.println(WordUtils.capitalize("love is everywhere")); // Love Is Everywhere
System.out.println(WordUtils.capitalize("sky, sky, blue sky!")); // Sky, Sky, Blue Sky!
System.out.println(WordUtils.capitalize(null)); // null

For titlecase:

System.out.println(WordUtils.capitalizeFully("fOO bAR")); // Foo Bar
System.out.println(WordUtils.capitalizeFully("sKy is BLUE!")); // Sky Is Blue!

For details, checkout this tutorial.

Answer 3

This is just another way of doing it:

private String capitalize(String line)
{
    StringTokenizer token =new StringTokenizer(line);
    String CapLine="";
    while(token.hasMoreTokens())
    {
        String tok = token.nextToken().toString();
        CapLine += Character.toUpperCase(tok.charAt(0))+ tok.substring(1)+" ";        
    }
    return CapLine.substring(0,CapLine.length()-1);
}

Answer 4

The following method converts all the letters into upper/lower case, depending on their position near a space or other special chars.

public static String capitalizeString(String string) {
  char[] chars = string.toLowerCase().toCharArray();
  boolean found = false;
  for (int i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) {
    if (!found && Character.isLetter(chars[i])) {
      chars[i] = Character.toUpperCase(chars[i]);
      found = true;
    } else if (Character.isWhitespace(chars[i]) || chars[i]=='.' || chars[i]=='\'') { // You can add other chars here
      found = false;
    }
  }
  return String.valueOf(chars);
}

Answer 5

Try this very simple way

example givenString="ram is good boy"

public static String toTitleCase(String givenString) {
    String[] arr = givenString.split(" ");
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

    for (int i = 0; i < arr.length; i++) {
        sb.append(Character.toUpperCase(arr[i].charAt(0)))
            .append(arr[i].substring(1)).append(" ");
    }          
    return sb.toString().trim();
}  

Output will be: Ram Is Good Boy

Answer 6

Using org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils makes it very simple.

capitalizeStr = StringUtils.capitalize(str);