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

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

Note: The solution shown above is the current solution in the Sample Programs repository as of Oct 26 2019 21:04:13. The solution was first committed on Oct 09 2019 17:27:39. As a result, documentation below may be outdated.

How to Implement the 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;
}

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][1] 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()][2] gives the length of the string as an integer. [toupper()][3] converts lowercase alphabet to uppercase and [printf()][4] 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 argv[1].

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.

char *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][5], [Repl][6]