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javascriptregexstringreplacelookbehind

Javascript method to capitalize the first letter of every word and also every word after hyphen or dash


I need a JavaScript method to allows me to convert the first letter of every word in a string to a capital letter like this: mike tyson wayne to Mike Tyson Wayne. The method should also be able to convert the first word after an hyphen to capital letter like this: mike-tyson wayne to Mike Tyson Wayne. The method should also be able to convert uppercase words to capitalize words like this: MIKE-TYSON WAYNE to Mike Tyson Wayne.

I have tried this method using regular expression gotten from another thread:

text.replace(/(^\w{1})|(\s{1}\w{1})/g, match => match.toUpperCase())
  • (^\w{1}): match first char of string
  • |: or
  • (\s{1}\w{1}): match one char that came after one space
  • g: match all
  • match => match.toUpperCase(): replace with can take function, so; replace match with upper case match

It worked for converting the first letter of a string to capital letter and also works for the first letter of a string after space.

I added this expression that was supposed to cater for first letter of a string after space to the expression. The expression is (?:- |\d\. ).*

Combined with the first expression, it became:

text.replace(/(^\w{1})|(\s{1}\w{1})|(?:- |\d\. ).*/g, match => match.toUpperCase());

The problem is that the method above doesn't work for the strings after the dash but still works for the strings after space.


Solution

    • \d is a digit, so your expression matches a - or a digit followed by . ...
    • {1} means one occurrence, which is the default anyways...

    Try something like this:

    /(^\w)|([-\s]\w)/g