PHP Strings Controlling Case

PHP Strings

Controlling Case

Problem

You need to capitalize, lowercase, or otherwise modify the case of letters in a string. For
example, you want to capitalize the initial letters of names but lowercase the rest.

Solution

Example  Capitalizing letters

            print ucfirst("how do you do today?");
            print ucwords("the prince of wales");

Example  prints:

            How do you do today?
            The Prince Of Wales


Example  Changing case of strings

            print strtoupper("i'm not yelling!");
            print strtolower('<A HREF="one.php">one</A>');

Example  prints:

            I'M NOT YELLING!
            <a href="one.php">one</a>

Discussion

Use ucfirst() to capitalize the first character in a string:

            print ucfirst('monkey face');
            print ucfirst('1 monkey face');

This prints:

            Monkey face
            1 monkey face

Note that the second phrase is not “1 Monkey face.”
Use ucwords() to capitalize the first character of each word in a string:


           print ucwords('1 monkey face');
           print ucwords("don't play zone defense against the philadelphia 76-ers");

This prints:

           1 Monkey Face
           Don't Play Zone Defense Against The Philadelphia 76-ers

As expected, ucwords() doesn’t capitalize the “t” in “don’t.” But it also doesn’t capitalize
the “e” in “76-ers.” For ucwords(), a word is any sequence of nonwhitespace characters
that follows one or more whitespace characters. Because both ' and - aren’t whitespace
characters, ucwords() doesn’t consider the “t” in “don’t” or the “e” in “76-ers” to be word-
starting characters. Both ucfirst() and ucwords() don’t change the case of non–first letters:


           print ucfirst('macWorld says I should get an iBook');
           print ucwords('eTunaFish.com might buy itunaFish.Com!');

This prints:

           MacWorld says I should get an iBook

           ETunaFish.com Might Buy ItunaFish.Com!

The functions strtolower() and strtoupper() work on entire strings, not just indi‐

vidual characters. All alphabetic characters are changed to lowercase by strtolow

er() and strtoupper() changes all alphabetic characters to uppercase:

           print strtolower("I programmed the WOPR and the TRS-80.");

           print strtoupper('"since feeling is first" is a poem by e. e. cummings.');

This prints:

           i programmed the wopr and the trs-80.

          SINCE FEELING IS FIRST" IS A POEM BY E. E. CUMMINGS.

When determining upper- and lowercase, these functions respect your locale settings.