Question

I have a CSV file like that:

"","LESCHELLES","","LESCHELLES"
"","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON","","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON"
"","SERRE CHEVALIER","","SERRE CHEVALIER"
"","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE","","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE"
"","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES","","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES"
"","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST","","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST"
"","PAS DES LANCIERS","","PAS DES LANCIERS"
"","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE"

And I’d like to convert it this way:

"","Leschelles","","LESCHELLES"
"","Sainte Croix De Verdon","","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON","STE CROIX DE VERDON","93"
"","Serre Chevalier","","SERRE CHEVALIER","SERRE CHEVALIER","93"
"","Saint Just D'Ardeche","","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE"
"","Neuville Sur Vannes","","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES"
"","Escueillens Et Saint Just","","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST","ESCUEILLENS ET ST JUST","91"
"","Luc","","LUC"
"","Pas Des Lanciers","","PAS DES LANCIERS","PAS DES LANCIERS","93"
"","Plan De Campagne","","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","93"

This would be nice. And better: lowercase all “whole” words like de, d', et, sur and des. This would give:

"","Leschelles","","LESCHELLES"
"","Sainte Croix de Verdon","","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON","STE CROIX DE VERDON","93"
"","Serre Chevalier","","SERRE CHEVALIER","SERRE CHEVALIER","93"
"","Saint Just d'Ardeche","","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE"
"","Neuville sur Vannes","","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES"
"","Escueillens et Saint Just","","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST","ESCUEILLENS ET ST JUST","91"
"","Luc","","LUC"
"","Pas des Lanciers","","PAS DES LANCIERS","PAS DES LANCIERS","93"
"","Plan de Campagne","","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","93"

Answer 1

Python has title():

Return a titlecased version of the string where words start with an
uppercase character and the remaining characters are lowercase.

The algorithm uses a simple language-independent definition of a word
as groups of consecutive letters. The definition works in many
contexts but it means that apostrophes in contractions and possessives
form word boundaries, which may not be the desired result:

"they're bill's friends from the UK".title() "They'Re Bill'S Friends From The Uk"

A workaround for apostrophes can be constructed
using regular expressions:

 import re
 def titlecase(s):
     return re.sub(r"[A-Za-z]+('[A-Za-z]+)?",
                   lambda mo: mo.group(0)[0].upper() +
                              mo.group(0)[1:].lower(),
                   s)

 titlecase("they're bill's friends.") "They're Bill's Friends."

---

Update: here’s the solution for French problem:

import re, sys 

def titlecase(s):
    return re.sub(r"[A-Za-z]+('[A-Za-z]+)?",
        lambda mo: mo.group(0)[0].upper() +
                   mo.group(0)[1:].lower(),
        s)  

def french_parse(s):
    p = re.compile(
        r"( de la | sur | sous | la | de | les | du | le | au | aux | en | des | et )|(( d'| l')([a-z]+))",
        re.IGNORECASE)
    return p.sub(
        lambda mo: mo.group().find("'")>0
                   and mo.group()[:mo.group().find("'")+1].lower() +
                       titlecase(mo.group()[mo.group().find("'")+1:])
                   or (mo.group(0)[0].upper() + mo.group(0)[1:].lower()),
        s); 

for line in sys.stdin:
    s = line[20:len(line)-1]
    p = s.find('"')
    t = s[:p]
    # Just output to show which names have been modified:
    if french_parse( titlecase(t) ) != titlecase(t):
        print '"' + french_parse( titlecase(t) ) + '"'

Just launch it like this:

python thepythonscript.py < file.csv

Then the output will be:

"Grenand les Sombernon"
"Touville sur Montfort"
"Fontenay en Vexin"
"Durfort Saint Martin de Sossenac"
"Monclar d'Armagnac"
"Ports sur Vienne"
"Saint Barthelemy de Beaurepaire"
"Saint Bernard du Touvet"
"Rosoy le Vieil"