How to capitalize word (i.e. first letter to upper) in KornShell

Question

Is there a builtin way in KornShell to capitalize a word, e.g. korn -> Korn? A Bash 4 example to clarify:

str='korn'
echo "${str^}"

If there is not a bultin way to do this in KornShell, what is the most concise and efficient way to write a function that will do it?

bash can do this with M-c (typically, Alt-c) at the beginning of the word. No idea about ksh though.
@Kazark, better specify whether you want editing or scripting functionality. My understanding was that you want something like str='korn'; echo "${str^}" in bash. But after @jw013's comment I am not so sure.

jlliagre · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-16 20:39:29Z

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Here is a pure ksh (ksh93) way:

function cap {
    typeset -u f
    f=${1:0:1}
    printf "%s%s\n" "$f" "${1:1}"
}

$ cap korn
Korn

answered Jul 16 '12 at 20:39

jlliagre
7,945826

Not excessively verbose. +1 ...I didn't know the syntax for string slicing, so that is helpful. – Kazark Jul 16 '12 at 20:56

1 Answer