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'm using the following function. I think it is faster in performance.

public static String capitalize(String text){
    String c = (text != null)? text.trim() : "";
    String[] words = c.split(" ");
    String result = "";
    for(String w : words){
        result += (w.length() > 1? w.substring(0, 1).toUpperCase(Locale.US) + w.substring(1, w.length()).toLowerCase(Locale.US) : w) + " ";
    }
    return result.trim();
}

Answer 2

  package com.test;

 /**
   * @author Prasanth Pillai
   * @date 01-Feb-2012
   * @description : Below is the test class details
   * 
   * inputs a String from a user. Expect the String to contain spaces and    alphanumeric     characters only.
   * capitalizes all first letters of the words in the given String.
   * preserves all other characters (including spaces) in the String.
   * displays the result to the user.
   * 
   * Approach : I have followed a simple approach. However there are many string    utilities available 
   * for the same purpose. Example : WordUtils.capitalize(str) (from apache commons-lang)
   *
   */
  import java.io.BufferedReader;
  import java.io.IOException;
  import java.io.InputStreamReader;

  public class Test {

public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException{
    System.out.println("Input String :\n");
    InputStreamReader converter = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(converter);
    String inputString = in.readLine();
    int length = inputString.length();
    StringBuffer newStr = new StringBuffer(0);
    int i = 0;
    int k = 0;
    /* This is a simple approach
     * step 1: scan through the input string
     * step 2: capitalize the first letter of each word in string
     * The integer k, is used as a value to determine whether the 
     * letter is the first letter in each word in the string.
     */

    while( i < length){
        if (Character.isLetter(inputString.charAt(i))){
            if ( k == 0){
            newStr = newStr.append(Character.toUpperCase(inputString.charAt(i)));
            k = 2;
            }//this else loop is to avoid repeatation of the first letter in output string 
            else {
            newStr = newStr.append(inputString.charAt(i));
            }
        } // for the letters which are not first letter, simply append to the output string. 
        else {
            newStr = newStr.append(inputString.charAt(i));
            k=0;
        }
        i+=1;           
    }
    System.out.println("new String ->"+newStr);
    }
}

Answer 3

This might be useful if you need to capitalize titles. It capitalizes each substring delimited by " ", except for specified strings such as "a" or "the". I haven't ran it yet because it's late, should be fine though. Uses Apache Commons StringUtils.join() at one point. You can substitute it with a simple loop if you wish.

private static String capitalize(String string) {
    if (string == null) return null;
    String[] wordArray = string.split(" "); // Split string to analyze word by word.
    int i = 0;
lowercase:
    for (String word : wordArray) {
        if (word != wordArray[0]) { // First word always in capital
            String [] lowercaseWords = {"a", "an", "as", "and", "although", "at", "because", "but", "by", "for", "in", "nor", "of", "on", "or", "so", "the", "to", "up", "yet"};
            for (String word2 : lowercaseWords) {
                if (word.equals(word2)) {
                    wordArray[i] = word;
                    i++;
                    continue lowercase;
                }
            }
        }
        char[] characterArray = word.toCharArray();
        characterArray[0] = Character.toTitleCase(characterArray[0]);
        wordArray[i] = new String(characterArray);
        i++;
    }
    return StringUtils.join(wordArray, " "); // Re-join string
}

Answer 4

public static String toTitleCase(String word){
    return Character.toUpperCase(word.charAt(0)) + word.substring(1);
}

public static void main(String[] args){
    String phrase = "this is to be title cased";
    String[] splitPhrase = phrase.split(" ");
    String result = "";

    for(String word: splitPhrase){
        result += toTitleCase(word) + " ";
    }
    System.out.println(result.trim());
}

Answer 5

If you prefer Guava...

String myString = ...;

String capWords = Joiner.on(' ').join(Iterables.transform(Splitter.on(' ').omitEmptyStrings().split(myString), new Function<String, String>() {
    public String apply(String input) {
        return Character.toUpperCase(input.charAt(0)) + input.substring(1);
    }
}));

Answer 6

Here is a simple function

public static String capEachWord(String source){
    String result = "";
    String[] splitString = source.split(" ");
    for(String target : splitString){
        result += Character.toUpperCase(target.charAt(0))
                + target.substring(1) + " ";
    }
    return result.trim();
}