Visual Basic Tips / Propercase routine for name and address fields

Suppose you have an application which has a user interface with text boxes used for entry fields for things like names and addresses. You suspect the user might use sloppy capitalization and your sorting routines depend on properly cased entries. What do you do? Include a readme asking the user to brush up on their data entry skills? No, add the following module to your project, and use it to do the propercasing when the user tabs out of the field. 8-)

Listing of ProperCase.bas

Public Function ProperCaseString(AString As String)
'will take any string and uppercase the first letter of each word in the string   
 'capitalize the first word in the string before checking to see if there are any more words
    If AString = "" Then Exit Function 'there was no entry in the field
   'store the first letter in the string
    LeftString = Left(AString, 1)
    'store the rest of the string
    RightString = LCase$(Right(AString, Len(AString) - 1))
    'uppercase the first letter of the string
    LeftString = UCase(LeftString)
    'put the newly capitalized first word and the rest of the string back into Astring variable
    AString = LeftString & RightString
    'find the first space in the string
    SpaceLocation = InStr(1, AString, " ", 1)
    While SpaceLocation <> 0 'if there was a space fall into the inner loop to process the rest of the words
        'store the already processed words in the string
        LeftString = Left(AString, SpaceLocation)
        'store the unprocessed portion of the string
        RightString = Right(AString, Len(AString) - SpaceLocation)
        'get the first letter of the unprocessed portion of the string
        CapString = Left(RightString, 1)
        'uppercase that letter
        CapString = UCase(CapString)
        'store the rest of the unprocessed portion of the string after the newly capitalized letter
        RightString = LCase$(Right(RightString, Len(RightString) - 1))
        'put the string back in Astring variable with the newly capitalized word
        AString = LeftString & CapString & RightString
        'check to see if there is another space in the string
        SpaceLocation = InStr(SpaceLocation + 1, AString, " ", 1)
    Wend
    ProperCaseString = AString
End Function

End of ProperCase.bas listing

To call the function above, use a call similar to the following:

    TextOne.Text = ProperCaseString(TextOne.Text)

Here is the same code converted to propercase all of the entries in the Name field of a UDT array.

Listing of ProperCaseArray function

Public Sub ProperCaseArray(TheArray() As Person)
'will take any string and uppercase the first letter of each word in the string
    Dim UpperBound As Long 'number of elements in passed in array
    UpperBound = UBound(TheArray)
    Dim LoopCount As Long
    LoopCount = -1  'initialize loop counter for do loop
    Do
        LoopCount = LoopCount + 1 'increment loop counter
        'capitalize the first word in the string before checking to see if there are any more words
        'store the first letter in the string
        LeftString = Left(TheArray(LoopCount).Name, 1)
        'store the rest of the string
        RightString = Right(TheArray(LoopCount).Name, Len(TheArray(LoopCount).Name) - 1)
        'uppercase the first letter of the string
        LeftString = UCase(LeftString)
        'put the newly capitalized first word and the rest of the string back into the array
        TheArray(LoopCount).Name = LeftString & RightString
        'find the first space in the string
        SpaceLocation = InStr(1, TheArray(LoopCount).Name, " ", 1)
        While SpaceLocation <> 0 'if there was a space fall into the inner loop to process the rest of the words
            'store the already processed words in the string
            LeftString = Left(TheArray(LoopCount).Name, SpaceLocation)
            'store the unprocessed portion of the string
            RightString = Right(TheArray(LoopCount).Name, Len(TheArray(LoopCount).Name) - SpaceLocation)
            'get the first letter of the unprocessed portion of the string
            CapString = Left(RightString, 1)
            'uppercase that letter
            CapString = UCase(CapString)
            'store the rest of the unprocessed portion of the string after the newly capitalized letter
            RightString = Right(RightString, Len(RightString) - 1)
            'put the string back in the array with the newly capitalized word
            TheArray(LoopCount).Name = LeftString & CapString & RightString
            'check to see if there is another space in the string
            SpaceLocation = InStr(SpaceLocation + 1, TheArray(LoopCount).Name, " ", 1)
        Wend
    'loop through all elements in the array
    Loop Until LoopCount = UpperBound
End Sub

End of ProperCaseArray listing

And here's how you call the routine and pass it the array

    ProperCaseArray People()

Note that People() must be a publicly declared UDT  array with at least the following structure.

Public Type Person
    Name As String         '10 bytes + length
End Type

Public People() As Person