Php function UTF-8 characters issue

Question

Here is my function that makes the first character of the first word of a sentence uppercase:

function sentenceCase($str)
{
    $cap = true;
    $ret = '';
    for ($x = 0; $x < strlen($str); $x++) {
        $letter = substr($str, $x, 1);
        if ($letter == "." || $letter == "!" || $letter == "?") {
            $cap = true;
        } elseif ($letter != " " && $cap == true) {
            $letter = strtoupper($letter);
            $cap = false;
        }
        $ret .= $letter;
    }
    return $ret;
}

It converts "sample sentence" into "Sample sentence". The problem is, it doesn't capitalize UTF-8 characters. See this example.

What am I doing wrong?

Use the multi-byte strings functions (you may need to install it, depending on your PHP version). — ɴᴀᴛᴇ ᴅᴇᴠ
– ɴᴀᴛᴇ ᴅᴇᴠ, Commented Sep 17, 2013 at 8:42
add teh meta tag first on your header after that check the code out put <meta charset="utf-8"> — Vikas Gautam
– Vikas Gautam, Commented Sep 17, 2013 at 8:53

Jon · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-17 09:02:24Z

4

The most straightforward way to make your code UTF-8 aware is to use mbstring functions instead of the plain dumb ones in the three cases where the latter appear:

function sentenceCase($str)
{
    $cap = true;
    $ret = '';
    for ($x = 0; $x < mb_strlen($str); $x++) {      // mb_strlen instead
        $letter = mb_substr($str, $x, 1);           // mb_substr instead
        if ($letter == "." || $letter == "!" || $letter == "?") {
            $cap = true;
        } elseif ($letter != " " && $cap == true) {
            $letter = mb_strtoupper($letter);       // mb_strtoupper instead
            $cap = false;
        }
        $ret .= $letter;
    }
    return $ret;
}

You can then configure mbstring to work with UTF-8 strings and you are ready to go:

mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');
echo sentenceCase ("üias skdfnsknka");

Bonus solution

Specifically for UTF-8 you can also use a regular expression, which will result in less code:

$str = "üias skdfnsknka";
echo preg_replace_callback(
    '/((?:^|[!.?])\s*)(\p{Ll})/u',
    function($match) { return $match[1].mb_strtoupper($match[2], 'UTF-8'); },
    $str);

edited Sep 17, 2013 at 9:02

answered Sep 17, 2013 at 8:43

Jon

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4 Comments

heron Over a year ago

it capitalized every word, not starting one. I need sentence case not, every word

Jon Over a year ago

@heron: Sorry, I didn't read the question properly. I updated the answer.

heron Over a year ago

doesn't work for me. result is same as argument passed into function

Jon Over a year ago

@heron: The script contains a string literal. Is it saved as UTF-8? If it is, there is no reason why this would not work.

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