Reputation: 6026
In Vim, I know we can use ~
to capitalize a single char (as mentioned in this question), but is there a way to capitalize the first letter of each word in a selection using Vim?
For example, if I would like to change this
hello world from stack overflow
to
Hello World From Stack Overflow
how should I do it in Vim?
Upvotes: 128
Views: 57312
Reputation: 360
The fastest way to do what you want on a random string and retain some control of words that you generally do not want capitalized (eg: articles like of/and) is to use ~
to change the case of the first word and then w.
to select and change each word in turn, bearing in mind you can skip the .
(repeat char) if you don't want to capitalize a particular word.
Upvotes: 1
Reputation: 3653
:help case
says:
To turn one line into title caps, make every first letter of a word
uppercase:
: s/\v<(.)(\w*)/\u\1\L\2/g
Explanation:
: # Enter ex command line mode.
space # The space after the colon means that there is no
# address range i.e. line,line or % for entire
# file.
s/pattern/result/g # The overall search and replace command uses
# forward slashes. The g means to apply the
# change to every thing on the line. If there
# g is missing, then change just the first match
# is changed.
The pattern portion has this meaning:
\v # Means to enter very magic mode.
< # Find the beginning of a word boundary.
(.) # The first () construct is a capture group.
# Inside the () a single ., dot, means match any
# character.
(\w*) # The second () capture group contains \w*. This
# means find one or more word characters. \w* is
# shorthand for [a-zA-Z0-9_].
The result or replacement portion has this meaning:
\u # Means to uppercase the following character.
\1 # Each () capture group is assigned a number
# from 1 to 9. \1 or back slash one says use what
# I captured in the first capture group.
\L # Means to lowercase all the following characters.
\2 # Use the second capture group
Result:
ROPER STATE PARK
Roper State Park
An alternate to the very magic mode:
: % s/\<\(.\)\(\w*\)/\u\1\L\2/g
# Each capture group requires a backslash to enable their meta
# character meaning i.e. "\(\)" versus "()".
Upvotes: 77
Reputation: 213411
You can use the following substitution:
s/\<./\u&/g
\<
matches the start of a word.
matches the first character of a word\u
tells Vim to uppercase the following character in the substitution string (&)
&
means substitute whatever was matched on the left-hand sideg
means substitute all matches, not only the firstUpvotes: 253
Reputation: 123
The following mapping causes g~ to "title case" selected text:
vnoremap g~ "tc<C-r>=substitute(@t, '\v<(.)(\S*)', '\u\1\L\2', 'g')<CR><Esc>
Upvotes: 0
Reputation: 11840
To restrict the modification to the visual selection we have to use something like:
:'<,'>s/\%V\<.\%V/\u&/g
\%V ............... see help for this
Upvotes: 1
Reputation: 41
Option 1. -- This mapping maps the key q
to capitalize the letter at the cursor position, and then it moves to the start of the next word:
:map q gUlw
To use this, put the cursor at the start of the line and hit q
once for each word to capitalize the first letter. If you want to leave the first letter the way it is, hit w
instead to move to the next word.
Option 2. -- This mappings maps the key q
to invert the case of the letter at the cursor position, and then it moves to the start of the next word:
:map q ~w
To use this, put the cursor at the start of the line hit q
once for each word to invert the case of the first letter. If you want to leave the first letter the way it is, hit w
instead to move to the next word.
Unmap mapping. -- To unmap (delete) the mapping assigned to the q
key:
:unmap q
Upvotes: 4
Reputation: 31658
There is also the very useful vim-titlecase
plugin for this.
Upvotes: 2
Reputation: 172788
The Vim Tips Wiki has a TwiddleCase mapping that toggles the visual selection to lower case, UPPER CASE, and Title Case.
If you add the TwiddleCase
function to your .vimrc
, then you just visually select the desired text and press the tilde character ~
to cycle through each case.
Upvotes: 16