ucwords function with exceptions

Question

I need some help i have this code that Uppercase the first character of each word in a string with exceptions i need the function to ignore the exception if it's at the beginning of the string:

function ucwordss($str, $exceptions) {
$out = "";
foreach (explode(" ", $str) as $word) {
$out .= (!in_array($word, $exceptions)) ? strtoupper($word{0}) . substr($word, 1) . " " : $word . " ";
}
return rtrim($out);
}

$string = "my cat is going to the vet";
$ignore = array("is", "to", "the");
echo ucwordss($string, $ignore);
// Prints: My Cat is Going to the Vet

this is what im doing:

$string = "my cat is going to the vet";
$ignore = array("my", "is", "to", "the");
echo ucwordss($string, $ignore);
// Prints: my Cat is Going to the Vet
// NEED TO PRINT: My Cat is Going to the Vet

Answer 1

- return rtrim($out);
+ return ucfirst(rtrim($out));

Answer 2

Something like this:

function ucwordss($str, $exceptions) {
    $out = "";
    foreach (explode(" ", $str) as $key => $word) {
        $out .= (!in_array($word, $exceptions) || $key == 0) ? strtoupper($word{0}) . substr($word, 1) . " " : $word . " ";
    }
    return rtrim($out);
}

Or even easier, before return in your function make strtoupper first letter