Proper capitalization of a name or company 1

gentforreal · May 15, 2003

We deal with many files that have hypenated names such as King Oldsmobile-honda. I have seen but cant find again funtions or snippets to conver Oldsmobile-honda to Oldsmobile-Honda.

Does anyone know of a function or small program snippet I could use to convert these pesky hyphenated names?

Thanks!
Will

darrellblackhawk · May 15, 2003

If you know there won't be any additional embedded
spaces in the string, the following expression
will work.

CHRTRAN(PROPER(CHRTRAN("Oldsmobile-honda","-"," &quot

)," ","-&quot

Darrell

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

gentforreal · May 17, 2003

Unfortunately, after looking I found instances where there were additional spaces. As ex: King Honda-Accura. Sorry, I forgot to mention my problem was not knowing where in the string the hypen might be. For simple two word strings I had already found your solution to work fine.. its these others that has me stumped.

mm0000 · May 17, 2003

xword="Oldsmobile-honda"
xno=1
xnum =1
do while xno > 0
xno=at('-',xword,xnum)
if xno > 0
xword=substr(xword,1,xno)+upper(substr(xword,xno+1,1))+substr(xword,xno+2)
endif
xnum = xnum+1
enddo

ramani · May 17, 2003

Hi Will,
**********************************************************
SCAN
cStr = PROPER(myField)
nCount = 1
DO WHILE .t.
lnPos = AT("-",cStr, nCount)
IF lnPos > 0
cStr=LEFT(cStr,lnPos)+PROPER(SUBSTR(cStr,lnPos+1))
ELSE
EXIT
ENDIF
nCount = nCount+1
ENDDO
IF myField # cStr
REPLACE myField WITH cStr
ENDIF
ENDSCAN
**********************************************************

ramani

(Subramanian.G),FoxAcc, ramani_g@yahoo.com

gentforreal · May 17, 2003

Cant wait to try these.. thanks to both of you....!!

darrellblackhawk · May 17, 2003

The following algorithm will work when embedded spaces
already exist.

Darrell

lcName = "John Mason's Oldsmobile-honda"

FOR i = 1 TO OCCURS(" ",lcName)
DIME laSpaces
laSpaces = AT(" ",lcName,i)
NEXT

lcName = CHRTRAN(PROPER(CHRTRAN(lcName,"-"," &quot)," ","-&quot

FOR i = 1 TO ALEN(laSpaces)
lcName = STUFF(lcName,laSpaces,1," &quot
NEXT

? lcName && Voila!

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

darrellblackhawk · May 17, 2003

Sorry...

Forgot '[ i ]' would change to italics...

lcName = "John Mason's Oldsmobile-honda"

FOR i = 1 TO OCCURS(" ",lcName)
DIME laSpaces( i )
laSpaces = AT(" ",lcName,i)
NEXT

lcName = CHRTRAN(PROPER(CHRTRAN(lcName,"-"," &quot

)," ","-&quot

FOR i = 1 TO ALEN(laSpaces)
lcName = STUFF(lcName,laSpaces( i ),1," &quot

NEXT

? lcName && Voila!

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

darrellblackhawk · May 17, 2003

Not to beat a dead horse, but here is the
solution presented as a function. I've included
it in my repository of functions.

Thanks for the problem - it'll help me also.

Darrell

************************************************************
*-- Function: ProperNameWithHyphens
*-- Author: Darrell C. Greenhouse
*-- Last Upate:
*-- Created: 2003.05.17
*-- Description: Converts a string with embedded hyphen
* and spaces to all hyphenated name
* parts set to Proper case.
*-- Pass: Char: lcName
*-- Returns: Char: lcName
*-- Called by:
*-- Calls:
*-- Assumuptions:
*-- Notes:
*-- Todo: Modify to take an additional
*-- parameter to specify which chars
*-- to convert and rename the function
*-- to a generic name
*-- Revisions:
************************************************************
FUNCTION ProperNameWithHyphens(lcName)
LOCAL i
LOCAL ARRAY laSpaces( 1 )
FOR i = 1 TO OCCURS(" ",lcName)
DIME laSpaces( i )
laSpaces( i ) = AT(" ",lcName,i)
NEXT
lcName = CHRTRAN(PROPER(CHRTRAN(lcName,"-"," &quot

)," ","-&quot

FOR i = 1 TO ALEN(laSpaces)
lcName= STUFF(lcName,laSpaces( i ),1," &quot

NEXT
RETURN lcNameIn
ENDFUNC

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

gentforreal · May 18, 2003

You have all been a big help.. thanks!!

dbMark · May 19, 2003

Here is a routine I wrote in dBase to emulate FoxPro's PROPER() function, but adds a couple flexible options. First, it is set here to allow spaces and hypens as delimiters, but more could be added. Second, you can exclude certain words such as "a", "an", "and", "to", etc.

If you wish, you could pass in the settings as additional parameters, but here they are shown as part of the code.

Code:

FUNCTION cPROPER    && CONVERT ALPHA STRING INTO PROPER NAMES
PARAMETERS P_TEXT
PRIVATE X, C_TEXT

C_TEXT=P_TEXT

IF LEN(RTRIM(C_TEXT)) > 1

   C_TEXT=LOWER(C_TEXT)

   FOR X = 0 TO LEN(C_TEXT)-1
       * NOTE: ISALPHA() ONLY CHECKS ONE CHARACTER
       DO CASE
          CASE X=0 
               IF ISALPHA(SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X+1,1))  && BEGINNING
                  C_TEXT = STUFF(C_TEXT,X+1,1,UPPER(SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X+1,1)))
               ENDIF
          CASE .NOT. SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X,1) $ &quot; -&quot;
        * CASE SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X,1)<>&quot; &quot;
                  IF (X > 1 .AND. SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X-1,2) == &quot;Mc&quot;) .OR. ;
                     (X > 0 .AND. SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X,1) $ &quot;([{}])&quot;)
                     C_TEXT = STUFF(C_TEXT,X+1,1,UPPER(SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X+1,1)))
                  ENDIF
          CASE ISALPHA(SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X+1,1))
               IF .NOT. (SUBSTR(C_TEXT+&quot; &quot;  ,X,3) $ &quot; a &quot;   .OR. ;
                         SUBSTR(C_TEXT+&quot;  &quot; ,X,4) $ &quot; in is of or &quot;  .OR. ;
                         SUBSTR(C_TEXT+&quot;   &quot;,X,5) $ &quot; and the &quot; )
                       * OTHER POSSIBLES: at from to for by
                  C_TEXT = STUFF(C_TEXT,X+1,1,UPPER(SUBSTR(C_TEXT,X+1,1)))
               ENDIF
       ENDCASE
   NEXT
ENDIF
RETURN C_TEXT  && THIS IS RETURNED BY FUNCTION

gentforreal · May 19, 2003

as usual.... I tried to make it difficult..

Hey.. the strtran() function is all thats needed!!

Thanks to all!

craigsboyd · May 20, 2003

gentforreal,

I'm glad you've found the solution. Could you tell me how you are using the strtran() function to address the problem you've outlined above? Just a snippet or quick explanation would do. At first I thought that you were perhaps using the strtran() function to replace some of the code posted above by darrellblackhawk, but your line "...the strtran() function is all thats needed!!" has me wondering if you have found a single line that works.

darrellblackhawk,

Yeah I ran into that

Code:

[I]

turned to italics thing once. Gagnon showed me the [ code][ /code] tags a little while back and I use them now...just passing it on in case you didn't know, if you already knew then ignore me.

Slighthaze = NULL

darrellblackhawk · May 20, 2003

Yep... I knew.
I use '[i..j..k...]' as array iterators all of the
time, so I have to be careful on this forum.

Darrell

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

sermac · May 20, 2003

Hi: have been learning from this discussion. . .very good stuff. . .my compliments!

Been trying to get this to work:

PUBLIC cLname
cLname=dex.cLastname ??? "McMillian" , "McCoy" etc.

Field imput mask is "proper"
How can I get the "M" or "C" to be UPPER?

THX for any feedback.

Bill

Mike Gagnon · May 20, 2003

darrellblackhawk

Forgot '[ i ]' would change to italics...

Just a suggestion, but in order to "show" something in between square brackets, either unselect the "process TGML" at the bottom of your post (which will ignore all TGML tags in that post) or you could also use the ["ignore"]["/ignore"] (without the quotation marks) tags before and after the area where you need to show the "[" .

Mike Gagnon

If you want to get the best response to a question, please check out FAQ184-2483 first.

darrellblackhawk · May 20, 2003

Thanks for the tip Mike.

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

darrellblackhawk · May 20, 2003

Sermac:

Although your problem is related, you should start
a new thread and possibly reference the thread that
piqued your interest. Otherwise, your request might
get lost in the rest of the posts of the related thread.

As to your problem, a modification of the solution I
provided will probably work. Unfortunately, I don't
have the time right now to explore it.

There are a number of functions out there that are
'McCoy' aware

, so I doubt you'll be without help
for long.

Darrell

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

gentforreal · May 20, 2003

I added a small snippet is all.....

replace all company with strtran(company,"-", " &quot

Viola, all dashes are gone.... Works every time.

Seems I am always missing the easy way.

Now I have to deal with how to identify if a field exists... Afield? or Ascan? sigh.

darrellblackhawk · May 20, 2003

I thought you wanted to keep the hyphens.

As when a woman appends their husband's last name
onto the end of their own.

Anyway, the problem was fun!

btw use:

lnFieldCount = afields(laFields, cTableName|WorkArea#)

Note that the table referenced gets selected automatically
with the afields() command, so you may want to save
the current workarea

Darrell

'We all must do the hard bits so when we get bit we know where to bite'

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