Title-case a heading
The CMS title-cases headings on save, but the house style leaves the small joining words in lowercase unless one of them opens the heading.
- Capitalise the first letter of every word and lowercase the rest of it.
- These stay lowercase: a, an, and, as, at, but, by, for, in, of, on, or, the, to.
- Except the very first word, which is always capitalised.
- Words are separated by single spaces.
titleCase(heading: string) → string
C++ needs a compiler and Drill does not host one yet, so this page is the reference rather than an exercise: the problem, worked examples, and the solution in full. To type it out, the same problem runs in Python.
Where you start
std::string titleCase(std::string heading) {
}Worked examples
| Call | Result |
|---|---|
titleCase(std::string("the lord of the rings")) | std::string("The Lord of the Rings") |
titleCase(std::string("a tale OF two cities")) | std::string("A Tale of Two Cities") |
titleCase(std::string("hello")) | std::string("Hello") |
titleCase(std::string("of mice and men")) | std::string("Of Mice and Men") |
Hint
Handle index 0 as its own case, then let the small-word list decide for the rest.
Reference solution in C++
std::string titleCase(std::string heading) {
std::set<string> small{"a", "an", "and", "as", "at", "but", "by", "for", "in", "of", "on", "or", "the", "to"};
if (heading.empty()) return "";
std::vector<string> parts;
string cur;
for (char c : heading) {
if (c == ' ') { parts.push_back(cur); cur.clear(); }
else cur += static_cast<char>(tolower(static_cast<unsigned char>(c)));
}
parts.push_back(cur);
string result;
for (size_t i = 0; i < parts.size(); i++) {
if (i) result += ' ';
string w = parts[i];
if (i > 0 && small.count(w)) result += w;
else if (w.empty()) result += w;
else { w[0] = static_cast<char>(toupper(static_cast<unsigned char>(w[0]))); result += w; }
}
return result;
}