Capitalize first letter of every word in Lua

Question

I'm able to capitalize the first letter of my string using:

str:gsub("^%l", string.upper)

How can I modify this to capitalize the first letter of every word in the string?

Answer 1

I wasn't able to find any fancy way to do it.

str = "here you have a long list of words"
str = str:gsub("(%l)(%w*)", function(a,b) return string.upper(a)..b end)
print(str)

This code output is Here You Have A Long List Of Words. %w* could be changed to %w+ to not replace words of one letter.

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Fancier solution:

str = string.gsub(" "..str, "%W%l", string.upper):sub(2)

It's impossible to make a real single-regex replace because lua's pattern system is simple.

Answer 2

in the alternative answer listed you get inconsistent results with words containing apostrophes:

str = string.gsub(" "..str, "%W%l", string.upper):sub(2) will capitalize the first letter after each apostrophe irregardless if its the first letter in the word

eg: "here's a long list of words" outputs "Here'S A Long List Of Words"

to fix this i found a clever solution here

utilizing this code:

function titleCase( first, rest )
   return first:upper()..rest:lower()
end

string.gsub(str, "(%a)([%w_']*)", titleCase)

will fix any issues caused by that weird bug