PHP ucfirst

Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use the PHP ucfirst() function to make the first alphabetic character uppercase.

Introduction to the PHP ucfirst() function #

The ucfirst() function accepts a string and returns a new string with the first character converted to uppercase if that character is alphabetic.

Here’s the syntax of the ucfirst() function:

ucfirst ( string $string ) : stringCode language: PHP (php)

The ucfirst() function use the current locale to determine which character is alphabetic.

PHP ucfirst() function example #

The following example uses the ucfirst() function to convert the first characters of the first name and last name to uppercase:

<?php

$first_name = 'john';
$last_name = 'doe'

echo ucfirst($first_name) . ' ' . ucfirst($last_name); Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

John DoeCode language: PHP (php)

Dealing with multibyte characters #

The ucfirst() doesn’t support multibyte strings. To return a new string with the first character converted to uppercase, you can use the following mb_ucfirst() function:

<?php 

function mb_ucfirst($str)
{
    return  mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($str, 1);
}Code language: PHP (php)

How it works.

First, get the first character of the $str using the mb_substr() function and convert it to uppercase using the mb_strtoupper() function:

mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1))Code language: PHP (php)

Then, concatenate the uppercase character with the remaining characters in the string:

mb_strtoupper(mb_substr($str, 0, 1)) . mb_substr($str, 1);Code language: PHP (php)

The following example uses the ucfirst() to convert the first letter of the string äbtissin to uppercase:

<?php

$title = 'äbtissin';
echo ucfirst($title); // doesn't workCode language: PHP (php)

Output:

äbtissinCode language: PHP (php)

However, it doesn’t work as expected. Because in the default “C” locale characters, the ucfirst() function doesn’t convert character like umlaut-a (ä).

The following uses the mb_ucfirst() function instead:

<?php

$title = 'äbtissin';
echo mb_ucfirst($title);Code language: PHP (php)

Output:

ÄbtissinCode language: PHP (php)

Now, it works as expected.

Summary #

• Use the ucfirst() function to returns a string with the first alphabetic character converted to uppercase.