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mysqlcapitalization

Capitalize first letter of each word, in existing table

I have an existing table 'people_table', with a field full_name.

Many records have the 'full_name' field populated with incorrect casing. e.g. 'fred Jones' or 'fred jones' or 'Fred jones'.

I can find these errant entries with:

SELECT * FROM people_table WHERE full_name REGEXP BINARY '^[a-z]';

How can I capitalize the first letter of each word found? e.g. 'fred jones' becomes 'Fred Jones'.

Solution

  • There's no MySQL function to do that, you have to write your own. In the following link there's an implementation:

    http://joezack.com/index.php/2008/10/20/mysql-capitalize-function/

    In order to use it, first you need to create the function in the database. You can do this, for example, using MySQL Query Browser (right-click the database name and select Create new Function).

    After creating the function, you can update the values in the table with a query like this:

    UPDATE users SET name = CAP_FIRST(name);