Capitalize the first letter of both words in a two word string

user_406278 0
Viewed 125180

Let's say that I have a two word string and I want to capitalize both of them.

name <- c("zip code", "state", "final count")

The Hmisc package has a function capitalize which capitalized the first word, but I'm not sure how to get the second word capitalized. The help page for capitalize doesn't suggest that it can perform that task.

library(Hmisc)
capitalize(name)
# [1] "Zip code"    "State"       "Final count"

I want to get:

c("Zip Code", "State", "Final Count")

What about three-word strings:

name2 <- c("I like pizza")
title-case r string
14 Answers

This gives capital Letters to all major words 

library(lettercase)
xString = str_title_case(xString)
user_67065140

Another version using StrCap in DescTools

Text = c("This is my phrase in r", "No, this is not my phrase in r")

DescTools::StrCap(Text) # Default only first character capitalized
[1] "This is my phrase in r"         "No, this is not my phrase in r"

DescTools::StrCap(Text, method = "word") # Capitalize each word
[1] "This Is My Phrase In R"        "No This Is Not My Phrase In R"

> DescTools::StrCap(Text, method = "title") # Capitalize as in titles
[1] "This Is My Phrase in R"         "No, This Is Not My Phrase in R"
user_43633150

Here is a slight improvement on the accepted answer that avoids having to use sapply(). Also forces non-first characters to lower.

titleCase <- Vectorize(function(x) {
  
  # Split input vector value
  s <- strsplit(x, " ")[[1]]
  
  # Perform title casing and recombine
  ret <- paste(toupper(substring(s, 1,1)), tolower(substring(s, 2)),
        sep="", collapse=" ")
  
  return(ret)
  
}, USE.NAMES = FALSE)


name <- c("zip CODE", "statE", "final couNt")

titleCase(name)

#> "Zip Code"       "State" "Final Count"
user_107361630

✓ one line
✓ one existing function; no new package
✓ works on list/all words
✓ capitalizes the first letter AND lowers the rest of the word :

name <- c("zip CODE", "statE", "final couNt")
gsub("([\\w])([\\w]+)", "\\U\\1\\L\\2", name, perl = TRUE)

[1] "Zip Code"    "State"       "Final Count"

If you plan on using it a lot, I guess you could make a wrapper function with it :

capFirst <- function(x) gsub("([\\w])([\\w]+)", "\\U\\1\\L\\2", x, perl = TRUE)
capFirst(name)
user_77578500
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