Separate first letter from String for capitalization

Question

I want to take a String input form a user, and format it so that the first letter is capitalized and the rest is not. I would like to do this by splitting the first letter from the string and use .toUpperCase() on it and use .toLowerCase() on the rest, and then merge them back together.

I have an idea, but can't solve everything:

userInput = input.nextLine();
String firstLetter = ???
firstLetter.toUpperCase();
restOfString.toLowerCase();
String merged = firstLetter + restOfString;

This does NOT seem to work:

            name = input.nextLine();
            firstLetter = name.substring(0,1);
            remainingString = name.substring(1);
            firstLetter.toUpperCase();
            remainingString.toLowerCase();
            name = firstLetter + remainingString;

Answer 1

You can use substring.

String firstLetter = userInput.substring(0,1); //takes first letter
String restOfString = userInput.substring(1); //takes rest of sentence
firstLetter = firstLetter.toUpperCase(); //make sure to set the string, the methods return strings, they don't change the string itself
restOfString = restOfString.toLowerCase();
String merged = firstletter + restOfString;

Edit: If you wish to do error-checking on the user's input:

if(userInput.length < 2) {
    throw new InputMismatchException("Sentence too short to properly capitalize!";
}

Answer 2

I am guessing you are using Java based on toUpperCase(). What I would suggest you do, is use charAt() to get the first letter, and substring to get the rest.

You can try something like this:

String firstLetter = userInput.substring(0, 1); // Get first element. If you don't understand substring, let me know.
string remainingString = userInput.substring(1); // Grab chars from index 1 to the end.

firstLetter.toUpperCase(); // Capitalize string
remainingString.toLowerCase(); // Lowercase rest of string

String finalString = firstLetter + remainingString;

Hope this helps.