PHP 7.0.6 Released

ucfirst

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7)

ucfirstMake a string's first character uppercase

Description

string ucfirst ( string $str )

Returns a string with the first character of str capitalized, if that character is alphabetic.

Note that 'alphabetic' is determined by the current locale. For instance, in the default "C" locale characters such as umlaut-a (ä) will not be converted.

Parameters

str

The input string.

Return Values

Returns the resulting string.

Examples

Example #1 ucfirst() example

<?php
$foo 
'hello world!';
$foo ucfirst($foo);             // Hello world!

$bar 'HELLO WORLD!';
$bar ucfirst($bar);             // HELLO WORLD!
$bar ucfirst(strtolower($bar)); // Hello world!
?>

See Also

User Contributed Notes

plemieux
10 years ago
Simple multi-bytes ucfirst():

<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str) {
   
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1));
    return
$fc.mb_substr($str, 1);
}
?>
mattalexxpub at gmail dot com
7 years ago
This is what I use for converting strings to sentence case:

<?php
function sentence_case($string) {
   
$sentences = preg_split('/([.?!]+)/', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY|PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
   
$new_string = '';
    foreach (
$sentences as $key => $sentence) {
       
$new_string .= ($key & 1) == 0?
           
ucfirst(strtolower(trim($sentence))) :
           
$sentence.' ';
    }
    return
trim($new_string);
}

print
sentence_case('HMM. WOW! WHAT?');

// Outputs: "Hmm. Wow! What?"
?>
svetoslavm at gmail dot com
7 years ago
For some reason this worked for me.

Mac OS 10.5.1
PHP 5.2.6

<?php
  
/**
     * ucfirst UTF-8 aware function
     *
     * @param string $string
     * @return string
     * @see http://ca.php.net/ucfirst
     */
   
function my_ucfirst($string, $e ='utf-8') {
        if (
function_exists('mb_strtoupper') && function_exists('mb_substr') && !empty($string)) {
           
$string = mb_strtolower($string, $e);
           
$upper = mb_strtoupper($string, $e);
           
preg_match('#(.)#us', $upper, $matches);
           
$string = $matches[1] . mb_substr($string, 1, mb_strlen($string, $e), $e);
        } else {
           
$string = ucfirst($string);
        }
        return
$string;
    }
?>

Svetoslav Marinov
http://slavi.biz
prokur.net - there is my email
7 years ago
I believe that mb_ucfirst will be soon added in PHP, but for now this could be useful
<?php

if (!function_exists('mb_ucfirst') && function_exists('mb_substr')) {
    function
mb_ucfirst($string) {
       
$string = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($string, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($string, 1);
        return
$string;
    }
}

?>

it also check is mb support enabled or not
mingalevme at gmail dot com
2 years ago
Implementation of multi-bytes ucfirst for "multiword"-strings (module mbstring is required):

<?php

public static function ucfirst($str)
{
   
$str = mb_strtolower($str);
   
$words = preg_split('/\b/u', $str, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
    foreach (
$words as $word) {
       
$ucword = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($word, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($word, 1);
       
$str = str_replace($word, $ucword, $str);
    }
    return
$str;
}

?>
Quicker
4 years ago
if you want to ucfirst for utf8 try this one:

<?php
function ucfirst_utf8($stri){
if(
$stri{0}>="\xc3")
     return ((
$stri{1}>="\xa0")?
     (
$stri{0}.chr(ord($stri{1})-32)):
     (
$stri{0}.$stri{1})).substr($stri,2);
else return
ucfirst($stri);
}
?>

It is quick, not language (but utf8) dependend and does not use any mb-functions such as mb_ucfirst.
charliefortune
8 years ago
Here's a function to capitalize segments of a name, and put the rest into lower case. You can pass the characters you want to use as delimiters.

i.e. <?php echo nameize("john o'grady-smith"); ?>

returns John O'Grady-Smith

<?php

function nameize($str,$a_char = array("'","-"," ")){   
   
//$str contains the complete raw name string
    //$a_char is an array containing the characters we use as separators for capitalization. If you don't pass anything, there are three in there as default.
   
$string = strtolower($str);
    foreach (
$a_char as $temp){
       
$pos = strpos($string,$temp);
        if (
$pos){
           
//we are in the loop because we found one of the special characters in the array, so lets split it up into chunks and capitalize each one.
           
$mend = '';
           
$a_split = explode($temp,$string);
            foreach (
$a_split as $temp2){
               
//capitalize each portion of the string which was separated at a special character
               
$mend .= ucfirst($temp2).$temp;
                }
           
$string = substr($mend,0,-1);
            }   
        }
    return
ucfirst($string);
    }

?>
octavius
6 years ago
For lithuanian text with utf-8 encoding I use two functions (thanks [mattalexxpub at gmail dot com] and Svetoslav Marinov)

<?php
function my_ucfirst($string, $e ='utf-8') {
    if (
function_exists('mb_strtoupper') && function_exists('mb_substr') && !empty($string)) {
       
$string = mb_strtolower($string, $e);
       
$upper = mb_strtoupper($string, $e);
           
preg_match('#(.)#us', $upper, $matches);
           
$string = $matches[1] . mb_substr($string, 1, mb_strlen($string, $e), $e);
    }
    else {
       
$string = ucfirst($string);
    }
    return
$string;
}

function
sentence_case($string) {
   
$sentences = preg_split('/([.?!]+)/', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY|PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE);
   
$new_string = '';
    foreach (
$sentences as $key => $sentence) {
       
$new_string .= ($key & 1) == 0?
           
my_ucfirst(strtolower(trim($sentence))) :
           
$sentence.' '
    }
    return
trim($new_string);
}
?>
wilfried dot loche at fr dot adp dot com
6 years ago
If someone looks for the equivalent on Oracle DB, here it is: INITCAP. Hope this helps!
const
2 years ago
Еще один вариант "mb_ucfirst"
<?php
header
('content-type: text/plain; charset=utf8;');
function
mb_ucfirst($str)
{
    if (
preg_match('/[a-z]/ui', $str[0]))
        return
ucfirst($str);
   
   
$first = mb_strtoupper($str[0].$str[1], 'utf8');
   
$str[0] = $first[0];
   
$str[1] = $first[1];
    return
$str;
}

echo
ucfirst('строка в utf8 ucfirst')."\n";
echo
mb_ucfirst('строка в utf8 mb_ucfirst')."\n";
echo
mb_ucfirst('développeur mb_ucfirst')."\n";
echo
mb_ucfirst('éveloppeur mb_ucfirst')."\n";
?>
На выходе:
строка в utf8 ucfirst
Строка в utf8 mb_ucfirst
Développeur mb_ucfirst
Éveloppeur mb_ucfirst

Только для кодировки utf8.
steven at tux dot appstate dot edu
11 years ago
Note: the return for this function changed in versions 4.3 when a string is passed of length 0.  In <4.2 false is returned and in >4.3 a string of length 0 is returned.

Example:

$name = ucfirst("");
var_dump($name);

$name = ucfirst("owen");
var_dump($name);

Results for <4.2:
bool(false) string(4) "Owen"

Results for >4.3:
string(0) "" string(4) "Owen"
Ken Kehler
9 years ago
@ zee: this should solve your !, ?, and any punctuations you want to add. It can probably be cleaned up a bit.

<?php

function sentence_cap($impexp, $sentence_split) {
   
$textbad=explode($impexp, $sentence_split);
   
$newtext = array();
    foreach (
$textbad as $sentence) {
       
$sentencegood=ucfirst($sentence);
       
$newtext[] = $sentencegood;
    }
   
$textgood = implode($impexp, $newtext);
    return
$textgood;
}

$text = "this is a sentence. this is another sentence! this is the fourth sentence? no, this is the fourth sentence.";
$text = sentence_cap(". ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("! ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("? ",$text);

echo
$text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence! This is the fourth sentence? No, this is the fourth sentence.

?>
kiprasbal at gmail dot com
1 year ago
My version, converst first letter of the first word in the string to uppercase

public function mb_ucfirst($str) {
        $aParts = explode(" ",$str);
        $firstWord = mb_convert_case($aParts[0],MB_CASE_TITLE,"UTF-8");
        unset($aParts[0]);

        return $firstWord." ".implode(" ",$aParts);
    }
qeremy [atta] gmail [dotta] com
4 years ago
A proper Turkish solution;

<?php
function ucfirst_turkish($str) {
   
$tmp = preg_split("//u", $str, 2, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
    return
mb_convert_case(
       
str_replace("i", "İ", $tmp[0]), MB_CASE_TITLE, "UTF-8").
       
$tmp[1];
}

$str = "iyilik güzelLİK";
echo
ucfirst($str) ."\n";   // Iyilik güzelLİK
echo ucfirst_turkish($str); // İyilik güzelLİK
?>
vlknmtn at gmail dot com
4 years ago
Turkish solution:

<?php
mb_internal_encoding
("UTF-8");
mb_regex_encoding("UTF-8");

function
tr_ilkbuyuk($text)
{
   
$text = str_replace("I","ı",$text);
   
$text = mb_strtolower($text, 'UTF-8');
   
    if(
$text[0] == "i")
       
$tr_text = "İ".substr($text, 1);
    else
       
$tr_text = mb_convert_case($text, MB_CASE_TITLE, "UTF-8");
   
    return
trim($tr_text);
}

function
tr_ucwords($text)
{
   
$p = explode(" ",$text);
    if(
is_array($p))
    {
       
$tr_text = "";
        foreach(
$p AS $item)
           
$tr_text .= " ".tr_ilkbuyuk($item);
           
        return
trim($tr_text);
    }
    else
        return
tr_ilkbuyuk($text);
}

$deger = "ıişllşlsdg";

echo
tr_ucwords($deger);

?>
pete at namecube dot net
6 years ago
for anyone wanting to ucfirst each word in a sentence this works for me:

<?php
function ucfirst_sentence($str)
{
    return
preg_replace('/\b(\w)/e', 'strtoupper("$1")', $str);
}
?>
bgschool
6 years ago
Simple function for use ucfirst with utf-8 encoded cyrylic text

<?php
   
public function capitalize_first($str) {
       
$line = iconv("UTF-8", "Windows-1251", $str); // convert to windows-1251
       
$line = ucfirst($line);
       
$line = iconv("Windows-1251", "UTF-8", $line); // convert back to utf-8
       
       
return $line;
    }
?>
Uwe
8 years ago
@adefoor, Ken and Zee

Changing the case can only be done by understanding the text. Take for example "USA", "Sunday", "March", "I am ...", abbreviations like "prob." and so on.
adefoor at gmail dot com
8 years ago
Ken and zee

One thing I would do to make this more unviersally work would be to add strtolower() around your $sentence.  Doing this will allow you to convert an all caps text block as well as an all lowercase text block.

<?php

function sentence_cap($impexp, $sentence_split) {
   
$textbad=explode($impexp, $sentence_split);
   
$newtext = array();
    foreach (
$textbad as $sentence) {
       
$sentencegood=ucfirst(strtolower($sentence));
       
$newtext[] = $sentencegood;
    }
   
$textgood = implode($impexp, $newtext);
    return
$textgood;
}

$text = "this is a sentence. this is another sentence! this is the fourth sentence? no, this is the fourth sentence.";
$text = sentence_cap(". ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("! ",$text);
$text = sentence_cap("? ",$text);

echo
$text; // This is a sentence. This is another sentence! This is the fourth sentence? No, this is the fourth sentence.

?>
Anonymous
9 years ago
Some simple function for cyrillic and latin letters both:

function rucfirst($str) {
    if(ord(substr($str,0,1))<192) return ucfirst($str);
    else
    return chr(ord(substr($str,0,1))-32).substr($str,1);
}
Markus Ernst
10 years ago
A combination of the below functions to enable ucfirst for multibyte strings in a shared hosting environment (where you can not always count on mbstring to be installed):

<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str, $e='utf-8') {
    if (
function_exists('mb_strtoupper')) {
       
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $e), $e);
        return
$fc.mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $e), $e);
    }
    else {
       
$str = utf8_decode($str);
       
$str[0] = strtr($str[0],
           
"abcdefghýijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
           
"\x9C\x9A\xE0\xE1\xE2\xE3".
           
"\xE4\xE5\xE6\xE7\xE8\xE9".
           
"\xEA\xEB\xEC\xED\xEE\xEF".
           
"\xF0\xF1\xF2\xF3\xF4\xF5".
           
"\xF6\xF8\xF9\xFA\xFB\xFC".
           
"\xFE\xFF",
           
"ABCDEFGHÝIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
           
"\x8C\x8A\xC0\xC1\xC2\xC3\xC4".
           
"\xC5\xC6\xC7\xC8\xC9\xCA\xCB".
           
"\xCC\xCD\xCE\xCF\xD0\xD1\xD2".
           
"\xD3\xD4\xD5\xD6\xD8\xD9\xDA".
           
"\xDB\xDC\xDE\x9F");
        return
utf8_encode($str);
    }
}
?>
Bartuc
10 years ago
Here is the fixed function for Turkish alphabet..

<?php

function uc_first($str){
  
$str[0] = strtr($str,
  
"abcdefgh�ijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
  
"\x9C\x9A\xE0\xE1\xE2\xE3".
  
"\xE4\xE5\xE6\xE7\xE8\xE9".
  
"\xEA\xEB\xEC\xED\xEE\xEF".
  
"\xF0\xF1\xF2\xF3\xF4\xF5".
  
"\xF6\xF8\xF9\xFA\xFB\xFC".
  
"\xFE\xFF",
  
"ABCDEFGHI�JKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
  
"\x8C\x8A\xC0\xC1\xC2\xC3\xC4".
  
"\xC5\xC6\xC7\xC8\xC9\xCA\xCB".
  
"\xCC\xCD\xCE\xCF\xD0\xD1\xD2".
  
"\xD3\xD4\xD5\xD6\xD8\xD9\xDA".
  
"\xDB\xDC\xDE\x9F");
   return
$str;
}

?>
Markus Ernst
10 years ago
plemieux' function did not work for me without passing the encoding to every single mb function (despite ini_set('default_charset', 'utf-8') at the top of the script). This is the example that works in my application (PHP 4.3):

<?php
function my_mb_ucfirst($str, $e='utf-8') {
   
$fc = mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $e), $e);
    return
$fc.mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $e), $e);
}
?>
Ami Hughes (ami at mistress dot name)
12 years ago
In the event you sort of need multiple delimiters to apply the same action to, you can preg_replace this "second delimiter" enveloping it with your actual delimiter.

A for instance, would be if you wanted to use something like Lee's FormatName function in an input box designed for their full name as this script was only designed to check the last name as if it were the entire string.  The problem is that you still want support for double-barreled names and you still want to be able to support the possibility that if the second part of the double-barreled name starts with "mc", that it will still be formatted correctly.

This example does a preg_replace that surrounds the separator with your actual delimiter.  This is just a really quick alternative to writing some bigger fancier blah-blah function.  If there's a shorter, simpler way to do it, feel free to inform me.  (Emphasis on shorter and simpler because that was the whole point of this.) :D

Here's the example.  I've removed Lee's comments as not to confuse them with my own.

<?php

  
function FormatName($name=NULL)
   {
       if (empty(
$name))
           return
false;

      
$name = strtolower($name);
      
$name = preg_replace("[\-]", " - ",$name); // Surround hyphens with our delimiter so our strncmp is accurate
      
if (preg_match("/^[a-z]{2,}$/i",$name))  // Simple preg_match if statement
      
{
          
          
$names_array = explode(' ',$name);  // Set the delimiter as a space.
   
          
for ($i = 0; $i < count($names_array); $i++)
           {
               if (
strncmp($names_array[$i],'mc',2) == 0 || ereg('^[oO]\'[a-zA-Z]',$names_array[$i]))
               {
                  
$names_array[$i][2] = strtoupper($names_array[$i][2]);
               }
              
$names_array[$i] = ucfirst($names_array[$i]);
              
           }
   
          
$name = implode(' ',$names_array);
          
$name = preg_replace("[ \- ]", "-",$name); //  Remove the extra instances of our delimiter
          
return ucwords($name);
          
       }
   }

?>
bkimble at ebaseweb dot com
12 years ago
Here is a handy function that makes the first letter of everything in a sentence upercase. I used it to deal with titles of events posted on my website ... I've added exceptions for uppercase words and lowercase words so roman numeral "IV" doesn't get printed as "iv" and words like "a" and "the" and "of" stay lowercase.

function RemoveShouting($string)
{
$lower_exceptions = array(
        "to" => "1", "a" => "1", "the" => "1", "of" => "1"
);
                                     
$higher_exceptions = array(
        "I" => "1", "II" => "1", "III" => "1", "IV" => "1",
        "V" => "1", "VI" => "1", "VII" => "1", "VIII" => "1",
        "XI" => "1", "X" => "1"
);

$words = split(" ", $string);
$newwords = array();

foreach ($words as $word)
{
        if (!$higher_exceptions[$word])
                $word = strtolower($word);
        if (!$lower_exceptions[$word])
                $word = ucfirst($word);
         array_push($newwords, $word);

}
       
return join(" ", $newwords); 
}
Nethor
3 years ago
Simple but workable solution:

<?php
mb_internal_encoding
("UTF-8");  // before calling the function

function utf8_ucfirst($str){
   
preg_match_all("~^(.)(.*)$~u", $str, $arr);
    return
mb_strtoupper($arr[1][0]).$arr[2][0];
    }
?>
chris at bjelleklang dot org
5 years ago
For those who want a multibyte-compliant ucfirst() without wanting to mess with encodings, this should do the trick:

<?php
function mb_ucasefirst($str){
   
$str[0] = mb_strtoupper($str[0]);
    return
$str;
}
?>
Anonymous
9 years ago
lcfirst - In case you need to get the original string back after a ucfirst.

    function lcfirst( $str ) {
        $str[0] = strtolower($str[0]);
        return $str;
    }
webmaster at onmyway dot cz
8 years ago
Inspired by the lcfirst function a simple mb_lcfirst to cope with multibyte strings:

<?php
function mb_lcfirst($str, $enc = null)
{
  if(
$enc === null) $enc = mb_internal_encoding();
  return
mb_strtolower(mb_substr($str, 0, 1, $enc), $enc).mb_substr($str, 1, mb_strlen($str, $enc), $enc);
}
?>
Anonymous
11 years ago
Ah, the last code were spoiled, here is the fixed one:

<?php

function uc_first($str){
   
$str[0] = strtr($str,
   
"abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz".
   
"\x9C\x9A\xE0\xE1\xE2\xE3".
   
"\xE4\xE5\xE6\xE7\xE8\xE9".
   
"\xEA\xEB\xEC\xED\xEE\xEF".
   
"\xF0\xF1\xF2\xF3\xF4\xF5".
   
"\xF6\xF8\xF9\xFA\xFB\xFC".
   
"\xFD\xFE\xFF",
   
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ".
   
"\x8C\x8A\xC0\xC1\xC2\xC3\xC4".
   
"\xC5\xC6\xC7\xC8\xC9\xCA\xCB".
   
"\xCC\xCD\xCE\xCF\xD0\xD1\xD2".
   
"\xD3\xD4\xD5\xD6\xD8\xD9\xDA".
   
"\xDB\xDC\xDD\xDE\x9F");
    return
$str;
}

?>

So, this function changes also other letters into uppercase, ucfirst() does only change: a-z to: A-Z.
idont at remember dot it
3 years ago
In case you need a French version of ucfirst:

"été indien" => "Eté indien"
"ça va?" => "Ça va?"

<?php
function frenchUcfirst($v) {
 
$lowCase  = "\\xE0\\xE1\\xE2\\xE3\\xE4\\xE5\\xE7\\xE8\\xE9\\xEA\\xEB\\xEC\\xED\\xEE\\xEF";
 
$lowCase .= "\\xF1\\xF2\\xF3\\xF4\\xF5\\xF6\\xF8\\xF9\\xFA\\xFB\\xFC\\xFD\\xFF\\u0161";
 
$upperCase = "AAAAAA\\xC7EEEEIIIINOOOOOOUUUUYYS";
  return
strtoupper(strtr(substr($v, 0, 1), $lowCase, $upperCase)) . substr($v, 1);
}
?>

Note:
- Latin non french accented characters follow the same rule:
"ändå" => "Andå"
- Non ASCII characters in the function are in HEX format to avoid encoding issue...
Carel at divers information with dotcom
9 years ago
I made a small change. Now it takes care of points in numbers

function ucsentence ($string){
   $string = explode ('.', $string);
   $count = count ($string);
   for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++){
       $string[$i]  = ucfirst (trim ($string[$i]));
       if ($i > 0){
           if ((ord($string[$i]{0})<48) || (ord($string[$i]{0})>57)) {
              $string[$i] = ' ' . $string[$i];
           }  
       }
   }
   $string = implode ('.', $string);
   return $string;
}
info [at] spwdesign [dot] com
10 years ago
This is a simple code to get all the 'bad words', stored in a database, out of the text. You could use str_ireplace but since that's installed on PHP5 only, this works as well. It strtolowers the text first then places capitals with ucfirst() where it thinks a capital should be placed, at a new sentence. The previous sentence is ended by '. ' then.

<?php
function filter($text){
   
$filters=mysql_query("SELECT word,result FROM filter");
    while(
$filter=mysql_fetch_array($filters)){
       
$text=str_replace($filter[word],$filter[result],strtolower($text));
       
$parts=explode(". ",$text);
        for(
$i=0;$i<count($parts);$i++){
           
$parts[$i]=ucfirst($parts[$i]);
        }
       
$text=implode(". ",$parts);
    }
    return
$text;
}
?>
11 years ago
This function does not work as expected with characters from non-English alphabets (I only tested it with scandinavian letters, ��� => ���). It leaves them as lowercase.

Someone already commented that the function doesn't work on html entities, which is somewhat understandable. This bug however takes place before I convert the strings to html.
Michael
9 years ago
This is what you would expect php to deliver if there was a built-in function named ucsentence.

function ucsentence ($string){
    $string = explode ('.', $string);
    $count = count ($string);
    for ($i = 0; $i < $count; $i++){
        $string[$i]  = ucfirst (trim ($string[$i]));
        if ($i > 0){
            $string[$i] = '&nbsp;&nbsp;' . $string[$i];
        }
    }
    $string = implode ('.', $string);
    return $string;
}
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