Question

I’m using the NSString method [myString capitalizedString], to capitalize all words of my string.

However capitalization doesn’t work very well for words starting with numbers.

i.e. 2nd chance

becomes

2Nd Chance

Even if n is not the first letter of the word.

thanks

Answer 1

You have to roll your own solution to this problem. The Apple docs state that you may not get the specified behavior using that function for multi-word strings and for strings with special characters. Here’s a pretty crude solution

NSString *text = @"2nd place is nothing";

// break the string into words by separating on spaces.
NSArray *words = [text componentsSeparatedByString:@" "];

// create a new array to hold the capitalized versions.
NSMutableArray *newWords = [[NSMutableArray alloc]init];

// we want to ignore words starting with numbers.
// This class helps us to determine if a string is a number.
NSNumberFormatter *num = [[NSNumberFormatter alloc]init];

for (NSString *item in words) {
    NSString *word = item; 
    // if the first letter of the word is not a number (numberFromString returns nil)
    if ([num numberFromString:[item substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(0, 1)]] == nil) {
        word = [item capitalizedString]; // capitalize that word.
    } 
    // if it is a number, don't change the word (this is implied).
    [newWords addObject:word]; // add the word to the new list.
}

NSLog(@"%@", [newWords description]);