Question

How to encompass the first letter in every word with HTML tags?

For example:

$string = replace_first_word("some simple text",'<big>{L}</big>');
echo $string; //returns: <big>s</big>ome <big>s</big>imple <big>t</big>ext

edit:
ohhh, forgot to mention one important point, it Needs to work with UTF-8 Unicode…
because I’m planning to support both Russian and English with this.

Answer 1

Try this:

$string = preg_replace('/(?:^|\b)(\p{L})(\p{L}*)/u', '<big>$1</big>$2', 'some simple words');

Or if you want it in a function:

function replace_first_word($str, $format) {
    return preg_replace('/(?:^|\b)(\p{L})(\p{L}*)/u', str_replace('{L}', '$1', $format).'$2', $str);
}