Changing case of the first letter of words in string

[Bis]

I want to make the case of the first letter of all the words in a
selected string to upper case. The code

s/\b(\w+)/\u$1\E/g;

enables me to do this for the whole document.

But the string I want to match and operate on is all instances of
text following the string

SCTN:

as in

SCTN: News Analysis

or

SCTN: Special Report

But when I try

s/(SCTN:\s*)\b(\w+)/$1\u$2\E/g;

nothing seems to change? : (

Bis
--

[Gabriel Cooper]

Bis wrote:

> I want to make the case of the first letter of all the words in a
> selected string to upper case. The code
> s/\b(\w+)/\u$1\E/g;
> enables me to do this for the whole document.
> But the string I want to match and operate on is all instances of text
> following the string
> SCTN:
> as in
> SCTN: News Analysis
> or
> SCTN: Special Report
> But when I try
> s/(SCTN:\s*)\b(\w+)/$1\u$2\E/g;
> nothing seems to change? : (
> Bis

My guess (without actually trying) is the word boundary marker (\b).
Since you're grabbing all preceding whitespace you can't (in theory)
expect it to find whitespace before your word. So... try this:

s/(SCTN:\s*)(\w+)/$1\u$2\E/g;

[David K. Wall]

Bis <biswadip.dasgupta@centaur.co.uk> wrote:

> I want to make the case of the first letter of all the words in a
> selected string to upper case. The code
>
> s/\b(\w+)/\u$1\E/g;
>
> enables me to do this for the whole document.
>
> But the string I want to match and operate on is all instances of text
> following the string
>
> SCTN:
>
> as in
>
> SCTN: News Analysis
>
> or
>
> SCTN: Special Report
>
> But when I try
>
> s/(SCTN:\s*)\b(\w+)/$1\u$2\E/g;
>
> nothing seems to change? : (

That will only change the first letter of the first word after 'SCTN:'.
That's what you're seeing, right? If you want to change *all* the words
after SCTN: to start with uppercase (and leave the ones before it alone),
maybe something like this:

my $text = q(leave this alone SCTN: this isn't capitalized but should be);
if (/SCTN:/) {
my ($before, $after) = split /SCTN:/, $text, 2;
$after =~ s/(\S+)/\u$1/g;
$text = $before . 'SCTN:' . $after;
}
print $text;

I used \S instead of \w in an attempt to handle contractions such as
"can't" and "don't", etc.

Now I'd almost bet someone (John Krahn?) will come up with a more clever
approach and make it into a one-liner. :-)

[John W. Krahn]

Bis wrote:

>
> I want to make the case of the first letter of all the words in a
> selected string to upper case. The code
>
> s/\b(\w+)/\u$1\E/g;
>
> enables me to do this for the whole document.
>
> But the string I want to match and operate on is all instances of
> text following the string
>
> SCTN:
>
> as in
>
> SCTN: News Analysis
>
> or
>
> SCTN: Special Report
>
> But when I try
>
> s/(SCTN:\s*)\b(\w+)/$1\u$2\E/g;
>
> nothing seems to change? : (

s{^SCTN:\s*(.*)}{ ($a = $1) =~ s[(\w+)][\u$1]g; $a }e;



John
--
use Perl;
program
fulfillment

[James Edward Gray II]

On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 05:06 PM, bis wrote:

> Thanks Gabriel - your suggested code
>
> s/(SCTN:\s*)(\w+)/$1\u$2\E/g;
>
> is an improvement - it does capitalise the first
> letter - but only of the first word after "SCTN: " so
> i get something like
>
> SCTN: This is a section name
>
> What I need is
>
> SCTN: This Is A Section Name
>
> hope that makes sense! :)

Well, let's see if we can get a little closer:

s/(SCTN:\s*)(.+)$/join '', $1, map { ucfirst $_ } split /( )/, $2/ge;

See if that helps any.

James

[Zsdc]

*Please* CC the mailing list when you answer. I'm writing it so everyone
on the list could learn something, not just to fix your program or solve
your particular problem.

bis wrote:

> Tnaks zsdc and JEGII.
>
> --- zsdc <zsdc@wp.pl> wrote:
>

>>It gives a syntax error. Maybe try this:
>>
>> #!/usr/bin/perl -p
>> s/(\s)(.)/$1\u$2/g if/SCTN:/;

>
> This capitalises the first letter of every word in the
> whole document.

No, it doesn't. Only the lines containing "SCTN:" Have you run it?

>>or instead of /SCTN:/ use /^SCTN:/

>
> This doesn't do anything.
>
> or /^\s*SCTN:/
>
> Nor does this.

Well... Yes, it does. How did you run it, anyway?

> I think the title of my query was misleading - what I
> maybe should have said was "Uppercasing the first
> letter and lowercasing all the other letters of every
> word in a mixed case part of a string"?

This is much harder. It's easy to make the output like this:

I'Ve Been Reading O'Reilly Books

OR:

I've Been Reading O'reilly Books

but not:

I've Been Reading O'Reilly Books

which is correct. I suggest you to only uppercase characters, but if you
have to also lowercase the other ones then try:

#!/usr/bin/perl -p
s/(\s)(\S+)/$1\L\u$2/g if/^\s*SCTN:/;

or

#!/usr/bin/perl -p
s/\b(\w+)/\L\u$1/g if/^\s*SCTN:/;

(and maybe add:

use locale;

at the beginning) and see which suits your needs better. You might find
better examples in the Cookbook.

-zsdc.

[Bis]

--- zsdc <zsdc@wp.pl> wrote: > *Please* CC the mailing
list when you answer. I'm

> writing it so everyone
> on the list could learn something, not just to fix
> your program or solve
> your particular problem.
>

thanks for the reminder zsdc - i should have
remembered to cc the list when replying to you.

> bis wrote:
>

> > Tnaks zsdc and JEGII.
> >
> > --- zsdc <zsdc@wp.pl> wrote:
> >

> >>It gives a syntax error. Maybe try this:
> >>
> >> #!/usr/bin/perl -p
> >> s/(\s)(.)/$1\u$2/g if/SCTN:/;

> >
> > This capitalises the first letter of every word in

> the

> > whole document.

>
> No, it doesn't. Only the lines containing "SCTN:"
> Have you run it?

yes i have run it and below is the kind of output i
get (original input all lower case except capitalised
tags and for SCTN: line which is mixed case):

DOCB:
SRCE: Marketing Week
SCTN: Special Report:pRoMotIons And Incentives
PGNO: 5
HDLN: What
TEXT:
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text
These Are Double Spaces
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces
DOCE:

DOCB:
SRCE: Marketing Week
SCTN: Special Report:pRoMotIons And Incentives
PGNO: 5
HDLN: What
TEXT:
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text
These Are Double Spaces
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces
This Is Text This Is Text This Is Text These Are
Double Spaces
DOCE:

>

> >>or instead of /SCTN:/ use /^SCTN:/

> >
> > This doesn't do anything.
> >
> > or /^\s*SCTN:/
> >
> > Nor does this.

>
> Well... Yes, it does. How did you run it, anyway?

I have the script in the Perl/bin directory because it
does not run if I have it anywhere else. Also I run it
as #!/usr/bin/perl -w because #!/usr/bin/perl -p
freezes my MS-DOS prompt.

The original input is a file called test1.txt and the
output is a file called test3.txt

The whole program is as follows:

#1. path to input and output file
$inputfile = "C:/My Documents/Programming/Perl
exercises/test/test1.txt";
$outputfile = "C:/My Documents/Programming/Perl
exercises/test/test3.txt";

#2. filehandles
open (INPUT, "$inputfile") || die "can't open
$testfile";
open (OUTPUT, ">$outputfile") || die "can't open
$testfile";

#initialise $text
$text = "";

#3. read input file into $text
while (<INPUT>){
$text = $text . $_;
}

# 4) split document by DOCE: string into array of
tags
@stories = split (/DOCB:/, $text);
#@stories is array of each story

for (@stories){
# 5) general substitutions

#Marketing Week substitutions
if (/SRCE:\s*Marketing Week/i) {
#put substitutions here

s/(\s)(.)/$1\u$2/g if/SCTN:/; #uppercases everything

# 6) now put back DOCE: tag into joined up array
$text = join ("DOCB:", @stories)
}

# 7) now output file

print OUTPUT $text;

#close filehandles
close (INPUT);
close (OUTPUT);

>

> > I think the title of my query was misleading -

> what I

> > maybe should have said was "Uppercasing the first
> > letter and lowercasing all the other letters of

> every

> > word in a mixed case part of a string"?

>
> This is much harder. It's easy to make the output
> like this:
>
> I'Ve Been Reading O'Reilly Books
>
> OR:
>
> I've Been Reading O'reilly Books
>
> but not:
>
> I've Been Reading O'Reilly Books
>
> which is correct. I suggest you to only uppercase
> characters, but if you
> have to also lowercase the other ones then try:
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -p
> s/(\s)(\S+)/$1\L\u$2/g if/^\s*SCTN:/;
>
> or
>
> #!/usr/bin/perl -p
> s/\b(\w+)/\L\u$1/g if/^\s*SCTN:/;
>
> (and maybe add:
>
> use locale;

I get no result with any of this.

>
> at the beginning) and see which suits your needs
> better. You might find
> better examples in the Cookbook.

Thank you. I'll take a look.

-bis

>
> -zsdc.
>

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