Capitalize in C

Welcome to the Capitalize in C page! Here, you'll find the source code for this program as well as a description of how the program works.

Current Solution

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>

char *captialize(char str[]) {
    for(int i = 0; i < strlen(str); i++) {
        if(i == 0) {
            str[i] = toupper(str[i]);
        } else {
            continue;
        }
    }
    return str;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    if(argc == 2 && strlen(argv[1]) != 0) {
        printf("%s\n", captialize(argv[1]));
    } else if(argc > 2) {
        printf("Use quotes around multiple strings.\n");
    } else {
        printf("Usage: please provide a string\n");
    }

    return 0;
}

Capitalize in C was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• Softizo

This article was written by:

• Jeremy Grifski
• rzuckerm
• shubhragupta-code

If you see anything you'd like to change or update, please consider contributing.

How to Implement the Solution

Let's understand this code block by block in the order of execution.

Main Function

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <ctype.h>

In the first three lines, we are including header files using include directive to utilise some functions defined in header files later in the program. Here, Standard Input/Output header file (<stdio.h>) is called to use printf() function, C Standard Library (<string.h>) to use strlen() function and <ctype.h> to use toupper() function.

Before we move onto the next part, let's look on the functions which we called from header files. strlen() gives the length of the string as an integer. toupper() converts lowercase alphabet to uppercase and printf() prints formatted string as output.

For the next block,

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
    if(argc == 2 && strlen(argv[1]) != 0) {
        printf("%s\n", captialize(argv[1]));
    } else if(argc > 2) {
        printf("Use quotes around multiple strings.\n");
    } else {
        printf("Usage: please provide a string\n");
    }

    return 0;
}

In C, we declare a function using general form:

return_type function_name(parameter){
  ...
}

So, we are declaring main function with return_type integer and argc and argv as parameters to access command line arguments. argc and argv are variables which main function will get when run in command-line. argc stores argument count while argv stores array of strings that are arguments. This should be kept in mind that all command-line arguments are stored as strings.

argv[0] represents first argument which always is equal to name of our program. If we type the following command in terminal:

./capitalize string

Here, ./capitalize represents argv[0] and 2 represents argv1.

Now the if statement check the input given by the user.If the argc is equal to 2 and argv is not an empty string, capitalize() gets called. Otherwise if the user has provided more than 1 string or not provided any input at all, then the program will print correct usage pattern.

cchar *captialize(char str[]) {
    for(int i = 0; i < strlen(str); i++) {
        if(i == 0) {
            str[i] = toupper(str[i]);
        } else {
            continue;
        }
    }
    return str;
}

In this function, a for loop with a variable i is started. It runs till the length of string. If i = first letter of the string, str[0] get capitalized by toupper(). Otherwise rest of the string remains the same.

How to Run the Solution

gcc -o capitalize capitalize.c
./capitalize

Another handy option is to compile and run using online C Compiler such as OnlineGDB or Repl