Capitalize first letter of each line

Questions & Suggestions
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1

I’ve often got a list that looks like:

apple
pear
plum

I’m trying to use Search and Replace Clipboard Using Regular Expression to find the first character of each line and then capitalize it. I use the following

Search: (?m:^)(.)
Replace: \U$1

This works in other apps like TextWrangler, but in KM the \U doesn’t transform the text, it just inserts the character U.

2

Hey Tom,

Unfortunately and inexplicably ICU Regular Expression do NOT have a case-change operator…

This is one of the many reasons I keep the Satimage.osax AppleScript Extension on my system.

It’s fully Unicode-aware and makes that sort of thing simple.

set _text to "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country."
set _text to change "\\b(.)" into "\\u\\1" in _text with regexp and case sensitive

--> "Now Is The Time For All Good Men To Come To The Aid Of Their Country."

Keyboard Maestro has some case-change filters (see the Filter Variable/Clipboard actions), but they’re not as versatile as using regular expressions.

Other than using the Satimage.osax your best bet is shelling-out to Perl, Python, Ruby, or JavaScript.

I prefer to use the Satimage.osax for its power and simplicity.

-Chris

1 Like
3

TextSoap is another option -- scriptable, and one can design custom OS X Services for transformations. "Capitalize Words" is one of TextSoap's built-in actions. Another option is DEVONtechnologies' WordService, which is a smaller feature set than TextSoap. Both apps generate Services that can be given shortcuts and become invokable in Keyboard Maestro. WordService is $free, TextSoap is an investment -- only worth the bucks if you need the features over the long term.

1 Like
4

You can use this simple JavaScript:

##example Results

##Macro Library   @RegEx Change to Title Case


####DOWNLOAD:
<a class="attachment" href="/uploads/default/original/2X/6/6136d028821cebd23fca50a3fd92564637038c9c.kmmacros">@RegEx Change to Title Case.kmmacros</a> (2.0 KB)

---

<img src="/uploads/default/original/2X/a/aef4ffeb186e00faf28455d09151b10442d00147.png" width="458" height="616">

###JXA Script
```javascript
var kmeApp = Application("Keyboard Maestro Engine");
var sourceStr = kmeApp.getvariable('Source_String');

sourceStr.replace(/(^|[^a-z0-9])([a-z])/g, 
    function(m,m1,m2,p){ return m1+m2.toUpperCase(); }
    );

```
1 Like
5

Thanks a bunch, this is what I needed!