Uppercase first word in a string or sentence

I have just had a task which requires making the first word of a string uppercase. I have come up with quite an easy and simple solution and thought I would share it with you.

An example input string might look like “HELLO world. This is a test.” The required output is “Hello world. This is a test.”

Below is a function which will help you achieve this:

function uc_first_word($string) {
    $s = explode(’ ‘, $string);
    $s[0] = ucfirst(strtolower($s[0]));
    $s = implode(’ ‘, $s);
    return $s;
}

Now I know this function isn’t full proof, and assumes that the string you are passing it actually contains words. If the first word was a roman numeral for example, this function would not work (ie VI would become Vi).

Usage of this function is quite easy:

$string = uc_first_word(’HELLO world. This is a test.’);

I hope that this might help someone searching for a similar solution.

Tags: explode, implode, PHP, strtolower, ucfirst

Deleting array element by key in PHP

I had to think about this one for a while, as I was trying to delete an array element which I knew the key of (and there is no array_delete() function).

e.g. $array['something'] = ‘value’;

Turns out deleting the value is easy using the unset() command.

unset($array['something']);

$array['something'] no longer exists. Hope this helps someone else.

Tags: Array, PHP, Unset

Showing .htaccess files in Transmit FTP

I’ve been trying to work this one out for ages, but I’ve finally figured it out. I always like to be able to edit my .htaccess files, but seeing as they are hidden files, Transmit FTP would never show them. I always ended up going back to my PC and using CuteFTP Pro.

Turns out there is a simple option to show hidden files such as .htaccess in Transmit FTP. Simply select View -> Show Invisible Files.

So simple! I can’t believe I have missed this option all this time.