R/taxize_capwords.r

In taxize: Taxonomic Information from Around the Web

#' Capitalize the first letter of a character string.
#'
#' @export
#' @param s A character string
#' @param strict Should the algorithm be strict about capitalizing.
#'    Defaults to FALSE.
#' @param onlyfirst Capitalize only first word, lowercase all others. Useful
#'    for taxonomic names.
#' @examples
#' taxize_capwords(c("using AIC for model selection"))
#' taxize_capwords(c("using AIC for model selection"), strict=TRUE)

taxize_capwords <- function(s, strict = FALSE, onlyfirst = FALSE) {
  cap <- function(s) {
    paste(toupper(substring(s,1,1)), {
      s <- substring(s,2); if (strict) tolower(s) else s
    }, sep = "", collapse = " " )
  }

  if (!onlyfirst) {
    sapply(strsplit(s, split = " "), cap, USE.NAMES = !is.null(names(s)))
  } else {
    sapply(s, function(x)
      paste(toupper(substring(x,1,1)),
            tolower(substring(x,2)),
            sep = "", collapse = " "), USE.NAMES = FALSE)
  }
}