Capitalization

Ruby
1

Disclaimer : Ruby N. and I don’t know RegEx basically at all. I know
RegEx is the answer, just don’t know where to start.

Current Source:
str.split(’ ‘).each {|w| w.capitalize!}.join(’ ')

Text:
ADDITIONAL SPA (ONLY AVAILABLE W/PURCHASE OF POOL OR SPA)
SELLER HEAT/AC/DUCTWORK

Result:
Additional Spa (only Available W/purchase Of Pool Or Spa)
Seller Heat/ac/ductwork

Desired:
Additional Spa (Only Available w/Purchase of Pool or Spa)
Seller Heat/AC/Ductwork

Isssus:

  • Need to capitalize after a "/’
  • Need specific word case handling (e.g. “Ac” => “AC”,“or” => “or”,
    “w/[a]” => “w/[A]”)

Thanks,
Jason

2

On 12/9/06, Jason Vogel [email protected] wrote:

Isssus:

  • Need to capitalize after a "/’
  • Need specific word case handling (e.g. “Ac” => “AC”,“or” => “or”,
    “w/[a]” => “w/[A]”)

Take a look at http://zem.novylen.net/ruby/titlecase.rb (especially
the icap method).

martin

3

Jason Vogel wrote:

Result:
“w/[a]” => “w/[A]”)
How many special cases? In the worst case, you would have to use a
dictionary to avoid treating acronyms as a word. You already have two
rather difficult rules, one having to do with acronyms, another having
to
do with special treatment of the sequence “w/”.

What I am saying is this is likely to be more difficult than it seems,
especially because we only have one example of what might end up being
thousands of examples of free-form text.

4

Try this:
str.gsub(/[A-Za-z]+/) {|x| x.capitalize}

If you want the W of W/ uncapitalized:
str.downcase.gsub(/[A-Za-z]+(?!/)/) {|x| x.capitalize}

5

Oops, forgot to paste this one in:
To get keep words like “of” and “is” lowercase: (basically anything
under 3 letters)
text.downcase.gsub(/[A-Za-z]{3,}(?!/)/) {|x| x.capitalize}

6

On 12/8/06, Daniel F. [email protected] wrote:

Oops, forgot to paste this one in:
To get keep words like “of” and “is” lowercase: (basically anything
under 3 letters)
text.downcase.gsub(/[A-Za-z]{3,}(?!/)/) {|x| x.capitalize}

I agree with Paul L., there are too many special cases. And
Daniel’s regex here is a good example. I can spot at least three (to
me) obvious errors:

  1. Anything with a ‘/’ trailing will not get capitalized, so in the
    OP’s example, neither “heat” nor “ac” would be capitalized at all.

  2. There are plenty of words with fewer than three letters that should
    be capitalized. The first person pronoun “I”, for instance. Or even
    “of” or “is”, if they’re the first word in the sentence.

  3. In the absence of 1 and 2, “ac” would still get turned into “Ac”
    rather than “AC”.

Jacob F.

7

Jacob F. wrote:

  1. Anything with a ‘/’ trailing will not get capitalized, so in the
    OP’s example, neither “heat” nor “ac” would be capitalized at all.
    Trailing /'s do work as long as the word before it is at least 3 letters
    long.
    irb(main):004:0> src.downcase.gsub(/[A-Za-z]{3,}(?!/)/) {|x|
    x.capitalize}
    => "Additional Spa (Only Available w/Purchase of Pool or Spa) Seller
    Heat/ac/Ductwork "

  1. There are plenty of words with fewer than three letters that should
    be capitalized. The first person pronoun “I”, for instance. Or even
    “of” or “is”, if they’re the first word in the sentence.

  2. In the absence of 1 and 2, “ac” would still get turned into “Ac”
    rather than “AC”.

These are valid points that I feel shouldn’t be incorporated into the
original regexp.

8

Jason Vogel wrote:

Result:
“w/[a]” => “w/[A]”)

Thanks,
Jason

specials = %w( of or w AC ).
inject({}){|h,s| h.update({s.downcase,s}) }

puts DATA.read.downcase.split( /([^a-z]+)/ ).map{|s|
specials[s] or s.capitalize }.join

END
ADDITIONAL SPA (ONLY AVAILABLE W/PURCHASE OF POOL OR SPA)
SELLER HEAT/AC/DUCTWORK

— output -----
Additional Spa (Only Available w/Purchase of Pool or Spa)
Seller Heat/AC/Ductwork

9

William,

This is exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t understand it, but it’s
what I’m looking for.

Would you mind explaining what your code does?

Thanks,
Jason

10

Jason Vogel wrote:

ADDITIONAL SPA (ONLY AVAILABLE W/PURCHASE OF POOL OR SPA)
Isssus:

END
ADDITIONAL SPA (ONLY AVAILABLE W/PURCHASE OF POOL OR SPA)
SELLER HEAT/AC/DUCTWORK

— output -----
Additional Spa (Only Available w/Purchase of Pool or Spa)
Seller Heat/AC/Ductwork

It helps to inspect the data structures.

Try:

specials = %w( of or w AC ).
inject({}){|h,s| h.update({s.downcase,s}) }

p specials

text = DATA.read.downcase
p text.split( /([^a-z]+)/ )
puts text.split( /([^a-z]+)/ ).map{|s|
specials[s] or s.capitalize }.join

END
ADDITIONAL SPA (ONLY AVAILABLE W/PURCHASE OF POOL OR SPA)
SELLER HEAT/AC/DUCTWORK

11

Jason Vogel wrote:

William,

This is exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t understand it, but it’s
what I’m looking for.

Would you mind explaining what your code does?

Here is the code the prior poster offered (and please do not top-post –
it
makes it hard to reconstruct the thread):

puts DATA.read.downcase.split( /([^a-z]+)/ ).map{ |s| specials[s] or
s.capitalize }.join

Here is the breakdown:

DATA.read.downcase

Means: “read the data, convert entirely to lowercase”

.split( /([^a-z]+)/ )

means: “split the data on non-alphabetic boundaries (which in this case
produces an array of entities consisting of words and slashes)”

.map{ |s| specials[s] or s.capitalize }

Means: “submit each word to a block of code that either succeeds in
matching
the word with a predefined special set of exceptions or, failing that,
capitalizes the word (uppercases the first character)”

.join

Means: “join the array into one continuous line separated by spaces”

Finally, print it all using the very first command on the line –
“puts”.

12

On Dec 10, 10:53 am, “William J.” [email protected] wrote:

SELLER HEAT/AC/DUCTWORK

  • Need to capitalize after a "/’
    END
    inject({}){|h,s| h.update({s.downcase,s}) }
    SELLER HEAT/AC/DUCTWORK
    Paul and William,

Thank you both for taking the time to respond and explain. I really
appreciate it.

Thanks,
Jason