String capitalization not working

Question

What can be the reason of string capitalization not working?

A database column:

t.string   "name",       limit: 255

Some example:

flower_name = Flower.find_by(id: 1).name #=> "chamomile©"

Trying to capitalize (got the same output):

flower_name.capitalize #=> "chamomile©"

Checking if it is string:

flower_name.is_a?(String) #=> true

What do `flower_name.chars` and `flower_name.codepoints` return? — Stefan, Mar 01 '16 at 08:13
Is it possible that someone overrode the `capitalize` method? — spickermann, Mar 01 '16 at 08:23
Do a simple test in the console: flower_name = "John Do", the try capitalize again. If it doesn't work, the method might be overwritten. You could remove as many gems as you can an try it again to see if elimination would fix it. — Roger, Mar 01 '16 at 08:27

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 01 '16 at 09:39

5

capitalize works with ASCII characters only. Is there any chance your string contains non-ascii letters?

Try

flower_name.mb_chars.capitalize.to_s

edited Mar 01 '16 at 09:39

Azat Gataoulline

answered Mar 01 '16 at 08:12

dimuch

Thanks a lot! Worked like a charm :) – Nadiya Mar 01 '16 at 08:34
1

@Zelenka your question doesn't include any non-ASCII characters. Am I missing something? – Stefan Mar 01 '16 at 08:44
1

I've changed an output word for the security reason. But you're right, I will edit my question to add a non-ASCII character for future readers. Thank you, Stefan! – Nadiya Mar 01 '16 at 08:46
@Zelenka `capitalize` only affects the first character, i.e. `"chamomile©".capitalize` returns `"Chamomile©"`, just as expected ... – Stefan Mar 01 '16 at 12:47
Stefan, would you help me to provide a good example? I have no idea why ```.mb_chars.capitalize.to_s``` helped in my case – Nadiya Mar 03 '16 at 08:22
@Zelenka does you actual string start with an ASCII character? – Stefan Mar 08 '16 at 13:22
It starts with a cyrillic letter – Nadiya Mar 08 '16 at 13:34

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

2

mb_chars method may help you if you are using Rails >= 3.

 'æ-ý'.mb_chars.upcase

 => "Æ-Ý"

If you're not using Rails, you can:

use directly active_support gem:

require 'active_support/core_ext/string/multibyte'
try unicode gem.

I hope you will find an answer in this similar question: Special character uppercase

edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

Community

answered Mar 01 '16 at 08:23

Yuri Karpovich

2 Answers2