How do I programmatically change CamelCase names to displayable names

Question

I would like to take a class name or enumeration name that is camel case and display it in normal text for the user. How can I programmatically do this?

An sample input:

MainPageBackgroundColor

Expected output:

Main page background color

or

Main Page Background Color

lowercase the whole string then uppercase the first letter. could be done easily in one line of code — Jonesopolis, Jun 13 '13 at 17:33
I should also add that I already know what the enumerations look like, so I'm not expecting bad encoding. Here is an example: BackgroundColor would be displayed to the user as Background color in a combobox's Header property and the enumeration's values are populating the combobox. The user selects a color and it updates the ViewModel/UI. — Lance McCarthy, Jun 13 '13 at 19:20
@LanceMcCarthy I found [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/155487/1180426) regex to be most useful in splitting pascal cased names into separate words - and I wanted it to handle uppercase acronyms too. — Patryk Ćwiek, Jun 13 '13 at 19:31

score 11 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 13 '13 at 19:26

11

A regex option:

public static string ToMeaningfulName(this string value)
{
    return Regex.Replace(value, "(?!^)([A-Z])", " $1");
}

Input "MainPageBackgroundColor"

Output- "Main Page Background Color"

answered Jun 13 '13 at 19:26

nawfal

70,104
56
326
368

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:45

You can convert a string from CamelCase to a displayable string separated by spaces via:

public static string DisplayCamelCaseString(string camelCase)
{
    List<char> chars = new List<char>();
    chars.Add(camelCase[0]);
    foreach(char c in camelCase.Skip(1))
    {
        if (char.IsUpper(c))
        {
            chars.Add(' ');
            chars.Add(char.ToLower(c));
        }
        else
            chars.Add(c);
    }

    return new string(chars.ToArray());
}

This will convert from "CamelCase" to "Camel case" or "SomeRandomEnumeration" to "Some random enumeration".

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 15 '13 at 06:17

Just to round things out, an alternative solution using Linq with extension methods.

public static string ToSentenceCase(this string value)
{
    string[] spacedWords
        = ((IEnumerable<char>)value).Skip(1)
        .Select(c => c == char.ToUpper(c)
            ? " " + char.ToLower(c).ToString() 
            : c.ToString()).ToArray();

    string result = value.Substring(0, 1)
        + (String.Join("", spacedWords)).Trim();

    return result;
}

Returns: "Main page background color"

public static string ToTitleCase(this string value)
{
    string[] spacedWords 
        = ((IEnumerable<char>)value)
        .Select(c => c == char.ToUpper(c) 
            ? " " + c.ToString() 
            : c.ToString()).ToArray();

    return (String.Join("", spacedWords)).Trim();
}

Returns: "Main Page Background Color"

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:43

1

string a = "asdfaGasfdasdAA";
a = a.Substring(0,1).ToUpper() + a.Substring(1,a.Length-1).ToLower();

I took Jonesy's comment as a challenge...

answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:43

Sayse

42,633
14
77
146

1

Note that this will turn "SomeRandomEnumeration" into "Somerandomenumeration", which isn't particularly human readable :) – Reed Copsey Jun 13 '13 at 17:47
@ReedCopsey - Yes, but he wants to turn classes into display names which will be one word ;) (to OP - you can .GetType().toString() I think) – Sayse Jun 13 '13 at 17:49
I don't see anything that says "one word" - the question states that he wants to " display it in normal text for the user." To me, "normal text" would suggest more than one word – Reed Copsey Jun 13 '13 at 17:51
@ReedCopsey - "I would like to take a class name" – Sayse Jun 13 '13 at 17:51
1

@Sayse That's one camel case word as *input*, but doesn't mean he wants a single word as output... – Reed Copsey Jun 13 '13 at 17:51
@Jonesy - I dont think you can do it in one line with error handling too :P – Sayse Jun 13 '13 at 17:51
well, yeah...but who cares about that? – Jonesopolis Jun 13 '13 at 17:52
given OP's edit, it gives the wrong answer :) For clarity mention it in your answer. – nawfal Jun 19 '13 at 15:52

Lance McCarthy · Answer 5 · 2013-07-28T17:10:22.687

0

Here is the way I first did it. It's fast and works as expected, but after seeing the other answers, I changed it to the one I marked as Answer.

public static string CamelCaseToDisplayName<T>(this T enumeration)
{
    string name = enumeration.ToString();

    for (int i = 1; i < name.Length; i++)
    {
        char c = name[i];

        if (c >= 'A' && c <= 'Z')
        {
            name = name.Remove(i, 1);
            name = name.Insert(i++, ((char)(c + 0x30)).ToString());
            name = name.Insert(i, " ");
        }
    }

    return name;
}

edited Jul 28 '13 at 17:10

answered Jun 13 '13 at 17:30

Lance McCarthy

1,884
1
20
40

What happens when the character encoding is different? The answer is you get garbage output. If you want to make it more readable just insert spaces. The names are proper nouns after all, English dictates the first letter of each word is uppercase. – evanmcdonnal Jun 13 '13 at 17:38
This won't work - Remove/Insert/etc make new strings, they don't mutate the input... – Reed Copsey Jun 13 '13 at 17:45
(Should be `name = name.Remove(i, 1);`, etc) That being said, I'd suggest using the methods built into `System.Char`) – Reed Copsey Jun 13 '13 at 18:00

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Oct 05 '21 at 13:05

An example with the StringBuilder class and expressed as an Extension Method.

public static string ToCapitalWithSpaces(this string status)
        {
            var response = new StringBuilder(status[..1]);

            foreach (var chr in status.Skip(1))
            {
                if (char.IsUpper(chr))
                    response.Append(" ");

                response.Append(chr);
            }

            return response.ToString();
        }

How do I programmatically change CamelCase names to displayable names

6 Answers6