how to CaPiTaLiZe every other character in php?

Question

I want to CaPiTaLiZe $string in php, don't ask why :D

I made some research and found good answers here, they really helped me. But, in my case I want to start capitalizing every odd character (1,2,3...) in EVERY word.

For example, with my custom function i'm getting this result "TeSt eXaMpLe" and want to getting this "TeSt ExAmPlE". See that in second example word "example" starts with capital "E"?

So, can anyone help me? : )

Answer 1

Well I would just make it an array and then put it back together again.

<?php

$str = "test example";

$str_implode = str_split($str);

$caps = true;
foreach($str_implode as $key=>$letter){
    if($caps){
        $out = strtoupper($letter);
        if($out <> " ") //not a space character
            $caps = false;
    }
    else{
        $out = strtolower($letter);
        $caps = true;
    }
    $str_implode[$key] = $out;
}

$str = implode('',$str_implode);

echo $str;

?>

Demo: http://codepad.org/j8uXM97o

Answer 2

I would use regex to do this, since it is concise and easy to do:

$str = 'I made some research and found good answers here, they really helped me.';
$str = preg_replace_callback('/(\w)(.?)/', 'altcase', $str);
echo $str;

function altcase($m){
    return strtoupper($m[1]).$m[2];
}

Outputs: "I MaDe SoMe ReSeArCh AnD FoUnD GoOd AnSwErS HeRe, ThEy ReAlLy HeLpEd Me."

Example

Answer 3

This task can be performed without using capture groups -- just use ucfirst().

This is not built to process multibyte characters.

Grab a word character then, optionally, the next character. From the fullstring match, only change the case of the first character.

Code: (Demo) (or Demo)

$strings = [
    "test string",
    "lado lomidze needs a solution",
    "I made some research and found 'good' answers here; they really helped me."
];  // if not already all lowercase, use strtolower()

var_export(preg_replace_callback('/\w.?/', function ($m) { return ucfirst($m[0]); }, $strings));

Output:

array (
  0 => 'TeSt StRiNg',
  1 => 'LaDo LoMiDzE NeEdS A SoLuTiOn',
  2 => 'I MaDe SoMe ReSeArCh AnD FoUnD \'GoOd\' AnSwErS HeRe; ThEy ReAlLy HeLpEd Me.',
)

---

For other researchers, if you (more simply) just want to convert every other character to uppercase, you could use /..?/ in your pattern, but using regex for this case would be overkill. You could more efficiently use a for() loop and double-incrementation.

Code (Demo)

$string = "test string";
for ($i = 0, $len = strlen($string); $i < $len; $i += 2) {
    $string[$i] = strtoupper($string[$i]);
}
echo $string;
// TeSt sTrInG
// ^-^-^-^-^-^-- strtoupper() was called here

Answer 4

Here's a one liner that should work.

preg_replace('/(\w)(.)?/e', "strtoupper('$1').strtolower('$2')", 'test example');

http://codepad.org/9LC3SzjC

Answer 5

Try:

function capitalize($string){
    $return= "";
    foreach(explode(" ",$string) as $w){
        foreach(str_split($w) as $k=>$v) {
            if(($k+1)%2!=0 && ctype_alpha($v)){
                $return .= mb_strtoupper($v);
            }else{
                $return .= $v;
            }
        }
        $return .= " ";
    }
    return $return;
}
echo capitalize("I want to CaPiTaLiZe string in php, don't ask why :D");
//I WaNt To CaPiTaLiZe StRiNg In PhP, DoN'T AsK WhY :D

Edited: Fixed the lack of special characters in the output.