PHP:
Capitalizing a string

How to:

PHP natively supports various functions to capitalize strings, each serving a different purpose. Here’s how you can use them:

Capitalizing the first letter of a string:

$string = "hello, world!";
$capitalizedString = ucfirst($string);
echo $capitalizedString; // Outputs: Hello, world!

Capitalizing the first letter of each word:

$string = "hello, world!";
$capitalizedWords = ucwords($string);
echo $capitalizedWords; // Outputs: Hello, World!

Converting the entire string to uppercase:

$string = "hello, world!";
$upperCaseString = strtoupper($string);
echo $upperCaseString; // Outputs: HELLO, WORLD!

For scenarios requiring more customization or third-party solutions, libraries like mbstring (for multibyte strings) can be utilized, especially when dealing with internationalization where characters might extend beyond the basic ASCII set.

Using mbstring to capitalize UTF-8 strings:

Ensure you have the mbstring extension enabled in your PHP configuration, then:

$string = "élégant";
$capitalizedString = mb_convert_case($string, MB_CASE_TITLE, "UTF-8");
echo $capitalizedString; // Outputs: Élégant

This approach helps to accurately capitalize strings that include non-ASCII characters, adhering to the nuances of various languages.