How to camelcase only a specific part of a string? - regex

Question

I have a CSV file like that:
"","LESCHELLES","","LESCHELLES"
"","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON","","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON"
"","SERRE CHEVALIER","","SERRE CHEVALIER"
"","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE","","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE"
"","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES","","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES"
"","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST","","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST"
"","PAS DES LANCIERS","","PAS DES LANCIERS"
"","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE"
And I'd like to convert it this way:
"","Leschelles","","LESCHELLES"
"","Sainte Croix De Verdon","","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON","STE CROIX DE VERDON","93"
"","Serre Chevalier","","SERRE CHEVALIER","SERRE CHEVALIER","93"
"","Saint Just D'Ardeche","","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE"
"","Neuville Sur Vannes","","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES"
"","Escueillens Et Saint Just","","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST","ESCUEILLENS ET ST JUST","91"
"","Luc","","LUC"
"","Pas Des Lanciers","","PAS DES LANCIERS","PAS DES LANCIERS","93"
"","Plan De Campagne","","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","93"
This would be nice. And better: lowercase all "whole" words like de, d', et, sur and des. This would give:
"","Leschelles","","LESCHELLES"
"","Sainte Croix de Verdon","","SAINTE CROIX DE VERDON","STE CROIX DE VERDON","93"
"","Serre Chevalier","","SERRE CHEVALIER","SERRE CHEVALIER","93"
"","Saint Just d'Ardeche","","SAINT JUST D'ARDECHE"
"","Neuville sur Vannes","","NEUVILLE SUR VANNES"
"","Escueillens et Saint Just","","ESCUEILLENS ET SAINT JUST","ESCUEILLENS ET ST JUST","91"
"","Luc","","LUC"
"","Pas des Lanciers","","PAS DES LANCIERS","PAS DES LANCIERS","93"
"","Plan de Campagne","","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","PLAN DE CAMPAGNE","93"

Answer 1

Python has title():
Return a titlecased version of the string where words start with an
uppercase character and the remaining characters are lowercase.
The algorithm uses a simple language-independent definition of a word
as groups of consecutive letters. The definition works in many
contexts but it means that apostrophes in contractions and possessives
form word boundaries, which may not be the desired result:
"they're bill's friends from the UK".title() "They'Re Bill'S Friends From The Uk"
A workaround for apostrophes can be constructed
using regular expressions:
import re
def titlecase(s):
return re.sub(r"[A-Za-z]+('[A-Za-z]+)?",
lambda mo: mo.group(0)[0].upper() +
mo.group(0)[1:].lower(),
s)
titlecase("they're bill's friends.") "They're Bill's Friends."
Update: here's the solution for French problem:
import re, sys
def titlecase(s):
return re.sub(r"[A-Za-z]+('[A-Za-z]+)?",
lambda mo: mo.group(0)[0].upper() +
mo.group(0)[1:].lower(),
s)
def french_parse(s):
p = re.compile(
r"( de la | sur | sous | la | de | les | du | le | au | aux | en | des | et )|(( d'| l')([a-z]+))",
re.IGNORECASE)
return p.sub(
lambda mo: mo.group().find("'")>0
and mo.group()[:mo.group().find("'")+1].lower() +
titlecase(mo.group()[mo.group().find("'")+1:])
or (mo.group(0)[0].upper() + mo.group(0)[1:].lower()),
s);
for line in sys.stdin:
s = line[20:len(line)-1]
p = s.find('"')
t = s[:p]
# Just output to show which names have been modified:
if french_parse( titlecase(t) ) != titlecase(t):
print '"' + french_parse( titlecase(t) ) + '"'
Just launch it like this:
python thepythonscript.py < file.csv
Then the output will be:
"Grenand les Sombernon"
"Touville sur Montfort"
"Fontenay en Vexin"
"Durfort Saint Martin de Sossenac"
"Monclar d'Armagnac"
"Ports sur Vienne"
"Saint Barthelemy de Beaurepaire"
"Saint Bernard du Touvet"
"Rosoy le Vieil"

Answer 2

While you may be able to pull this off with some vim regex magic, I think it'll be easier if you solve the problem in your favorite scripting language, and pipe selected text through that from vim using the ! command. Here's an (untested) example in PHP:
#!/usr/bin/env php
<?php
$specialWords = array('de', 'd\'', 'et', 'du', /* etc. */ );
foreach (file('php://stdin') as $ville) {
$line = ucwords($line);
foreach ($specialWords as $w) {
$line = preg_replace("/\\b$w\\b/i", $w, $line);
}
echo $line;
}
Make that script executable and store it somewhere on your PATH; then from vim, select some text and use :'<,'>! yourscript.php to convert (or just :%! yourscript.php for the whole buffer).

Answer 3

The csv.vim ftplugin helps with working in CSV files. Though it does not offer a "substitute in column N" function directly, it may get your near that. At least you can arrange the columns into neat blocks, and then apply a simple regexp or visual blockwise selection to it.
But I second that using a different toolchain that is more suited to manipulating CSV-files may be preferable over doing this completely in Vim. It also depends on whether it's a one-off task or, you do this frequently.

Answer 4

Here is an oneliner vim command.
%s/"[^"]*",\zs\("[^"]*"\)/\=substitute(substitute(submatch(0), '\<\(\a\)\(\a*\)\>', '\u\1\L\2', 'g'), '\c\<\(de\|d\|l\|sur\|le\|la\|en\|et\)\>', '\L&', 'g')
I expect here to have no double-quotes in the first two fields.
The idea behind this solution is to rely on :h :s\= to execute a series of functions on the second field once found. The series of functions being: first change each word to TitleCase, then put all liants in lowercase.