Question

I’m looking through the code for kibo.js and found this function:

Kibo.capitalize = function(string) {
  return string.toLowerCase().replace(/^./, function(match) { return match.toUpperCase(); });
};

Anyone have any ideas why they might use this instead of just .toUpperCase?

PS – Kibo is found at https://github.com/marquete/kibo/blob/master/kibo.js

Answer 1

It basically converts the entire string to lower case first, and then capitalizes just the first letter.

capitalize:

TEST => Test
test => Test
teST => Test

…as opposed to toUpperCase:

test => TEST
teST => TEST
Test => TEST

toLowerCase:

TeST => test
TEST => test
tesT => test

Some languages also have a titleize method which capitalizes the first letter of each word, as in a title/proper name:

mary poppins          => Mary Poppins
a lovely and talented => A Lovely and Talented Title
what a title!         => What a Title!
the meaning of life   => The Meaning of Life
hello, world!         => Hello, World!

Notice that it doesn’t capitalize “and”, “of”, “the”, etc. unless they are the first word in the string.