ucfirst and explode not behaving as I'd expect them too

[bomburmusicmallet]

Hi everyone,

I have this code:

for ($i=0; $i<$count; $i++) 
{ 
 $topics = explode(";", $rowAR[$i]['topic']); 
 foreach ($topics as $topic)  
 {  
 $topicexpertAR[] = (array(ucfirst($topic),$rowAR[$i]['employeesID'],$rowAR[$i]['expert'])); 
 } 
 } 

The original text in the database is like this: "architectural history and theory; interior design history and theory; art history and theory", all lower-case unless a proper noun, and delimited by a semi-colon.

However, when I print from the array $topicexpertAR[], it ends up looking like this:

Topic ¦ Expert 
Architectural history and theory ¦ Dr. Doctor 
interior design history and theory ¦ Dr. Doctor 
art history and theory ¦ Dr. Doctor 

Only the first letter of the string $rowAR[$i]['topic'] is being changed to uppercase.

I have another record like this: "drug recalls by the FDA, etc., “pandemic” such as avian flu scare, west nile virus, etc." that ends up looking like this:

Topic ¦ Expert 
drug recalls by the FDA, etc., “ ¦ Dr. Doctor 
Pandemic” ¦ Dr. Doctor 
such as avian flu scare, west nile virus, etc. ¦ Dr. Doctor 

This entry doesn't even have semicolons.

Is there something wrong with my code? Thanks for looking.

[ericjust]

I'm not sure about the second part of your question.

The capitalization problem is due to whitespace at the beginning of the string. There is a space after the semi-colon and that is the first character in the string. Therefore ucfirst() is trying to capitalize a blank space.

You could use ucfirst(trim($topic)).

Hope this helps

[bomburmusicmallet]

Thank you! That was so obvious, but only in hindsight :)