Function to Make Pascal Case? (C#)

Question

I need a function that will take a string and "pascal case" it. The only indicator that a new word starts is an underscore. Here are some example strings that need to be cleaned up:

1. price_old => Should be PriceOld
2. rank_old => Should be RankOld

I started working on a function that makes the first character upper case:

public string FirstCharacterUpper(string value)
{
 if (value == null || value.Length == 0)
  return string.Empty;
 if (value.Length == 1)
  return value.ToUpper();
 var firstChar = value.Substring(0, 1).ToUpper();
 return firstChar + value.Substring(1, value.Length - 1);
}

The thing the above function doesn't do is remove the underscore and "ToUpper" the character to the right of the underscore.

Also, any ideas about how to pascal case a string that doesn't have any indicators (like the underscore). For example:

1. companysource
2. financialtrend
3. accountingchangetype

The major challenge here is determining where one word ends and another starts. I guess I would need some sort of lookup dictionary to determine where new words start? Are there libraries our there to do this sort of thing already?

Thanks,

Paul

Answer 1

You can use the TextInfo.ToTitleCase method then remove the '_' characters.

So, using the extension methods I've got:

http://theburningmonk.com/2010/08/dotnet-tips-string-totitlecase-extension-methods

you can do somethingl ike this:

var s = "price_old";
s.ToTitleCase().Replace("_", string.Empty);

Answer 2

Well the first thing is easy:

string.Join("", "price_old".Split(new [] { '_' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).Select(s => s.Substring(0, 1).ToUpper() + s.Substring(1)).ToArray());

returns PriceOld

Second thing is way more difficult. As companysource could be CompanySource or maybe CompanysOurce, can be automated but is quite faulty. You will need an English dictionary, and do some guessing (ah well, I mean alot) on which combination of words is correct.