How can I uppercase the first letter of all words in my string?

Question

First, all my cities were returned as UPPERCASE, so I switched them to lowercase. How can I get the first letter as uppercase now? Thanks for any help!

List<string> cities = new List<string>();

foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
{
    cities.Add(row[0].ToString().ToLower());

    **ADDED THIS BUT NOTHING HAPPENED**
     CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(row[0] as string);
}

return cities;

added regex tag so question can be found by RegEx experts (not me) ;-) — Davide Piras, Jan 23 '12 at 14:47
Already answered in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/72831/how-do-i-capitalize-first-letter-of-first-name-and-last-name-in-c — dg90, Jan 23 '12 at 14:50

Nahydrin · Answer 1 · 2012-01-23T14:56:20.237

18

Use the TextInfo.ToTitleCase method:

System.Globalization.TextInfo.ToTitleCase();

A bit from the MSDN example, modified to work with OP's code:

// Defines the string with mixed casing.
string myString = row[0] as String;

// Creates a TextInfo based on the "en-US" culture.
TextInfo myTI = new CultureInfo("en-US", false).TextInfo;

// Retrieve a titlecase'd version of the string.
string myCity = myTI.ToTitleCase(myString);

All in one line:

string myCity = new CultureInfo("en-US", false).TextInfo.ToTitleCase(row[0] as String);

edited Jan 23 '12 at 14:56

answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:48

Nahydrin

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I saw that, but couldn't figure out how to add it to my code. – Trey Copeland Jan 23 '12 at 14:50
1

@TCC System.Globalization.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(row[0] as string); – vc 74 Jan 23 '12 at 14:52
1

@TCC click the reference to the method at MSDN. It has sample code of how to use it. I'll add some to my post to save readers some time as well. – Nahydrin Jan 23 '12 at 14:52
1

@TCC The provided [link](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.globalization.textinfo.totitlecase.aspx) gives great examples. – CodeCaster Jan 23 '12 at 14:53

Assaf Stone · Answer 2 · 2013-07-10T11:26:49.130

4

I know I'm resurrecting a ghost here, but I had the same problem, and wanted to share what I think is the best solution. There are a few ways you can do it, either splitting the string and replacing the first letter, or transforming it into a char-array for better performance. The best performance, though, comes with using a regular expression.

You can use a bit of Regex voodoo to find the first letter of each word. The pattern you are looking for is \b\w (\b means the beginning of a word, and \w is an alpha character). Use a MatchEvaluator delegate (or an equivalent lambda expression) to modify the string (the first character, that your pattern found).

Here's an extension method over string that will upper-case-ify the first letter of each word in a string:

static string UpperCaseFirst(this string input)
{
    return Regex.Replace(input, @"\b\w", (Match match)=> match.ToString().ToUpper())
}

edited Jul 10 '13 at 11:26

answered Jul 10 '13 at 07:26

Assaf Stone

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It will not lowercase the non-first-letters though. – B3ret Mar 03 '16 at 23:04
2

Then just apply the function to input.ToLower() – Assaf Stone Mar 06 '16 at 00:57
The advantage of this post against others is that there have been thoughts about the conversion performance, thanks. – Mojtaba Sep 08 '22 at 08:40

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:54

Regex may seem a bit long, but works

List<string> cities = new List<string>();

foreach (DataRow row in dt.Rows)
{
    string city = row[0].ToString();
    cities.Add(String.Concat(Regex.Replace(city, "([a-zA-Z])([a-zA-Z]+)", "$1").ToUpper(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture), Regex.Replace(city, "([a-zA-Z])([a-zA-Z]+)", "$2").ToLower(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)));

}

return cities;

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:48

2

new CultureInfo("en-US",false).TextInfo.ToTitleCase(myString);

answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:48

BFree

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score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:49

here is an extension method that you can use. It supports the current culture, or allows you to pass in the culture.

to use:

cities.Add(row[0].ToString().ToTitleCase()

public static class StringExtension
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Use the current thread's culture info for conversion
    /// </summary>
    public static string ToTitleCase(this string str)
    {
        var cultureInfo = System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;
        return cultureInfo.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(str.ToLower());
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Overload which uses the culture info with the specified name
    /// </summary>
    public static string ToTitleCase(this string str, string cultureInfoName)
    {
        var cultureInfo = new CultureInfo(cultureInfoName);
        return cultureInfo.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(str.ToLower());
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// Overload which uses the specified culture info
    /// </summary>
    public static string ToTitleCase(this string str, CultureInfo cultureInfo)
    {
        return cultureInfo.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(str.ToLower());
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

0

With linq:

String newString = new String(str.Select((ch, index) => (index == 0) ? ch : Char.ToLower(ch)).ToArray()); *

gently stolen from this post : How to lowercase a string except for first character with C#

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

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answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:48

Orkun

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:48

You could use this method (or create an extension method out of it):

static string UpperCaseFirst(this string s)
{
    // Check for empty string.
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(s))
    {
        return string.Empty;
    }

    // Return char and concat substring.
    return char.ToUpper(s[0]) + s.Substring(1);
}

score 0 · Answer 8 · 2012-01-23T15:02:11.923

0

Here's quick little method:

public string UpperCaseFirstLetter(string YourLowerCaseWord)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(YourLowerCaseWord))
        return string.Empty;

    return char.ToUpper(YourLowerCaseWord[0]) + YourLowerCaseWord.Substring(1);
}

edited Jan 23 '12 at 15:02

answered Jan 23 '12 at 14:48

What if i send in `string.Empty`? – Oskar Kjellin Jan 23 '12 at 14:56

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 23 '12 at 15:03

    public static string UppercaseFirst(string value)
    {
        // Check for empty string.
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
        {
            return string.Empty;
        }
        // Return char and concat substring.
        return char.ToUpper(value[0]) + value.Substring(1);
    }

cities.Select(UppercaseFirst).ToList();

How can I uppercase the first letter of all words in my string?

9 Answers9

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