From capital letter to lowercase

Question

I have the following list

l = {{"CENTRALE-DETACHES", 485., 20.}, {"AGEN", 132., 
  5.}, {"AIX EN PROVENCE", 1200., 26.}, {"AMIENS", 400., 
  11.}, {"ANGERS", 262., 7.}, {"BASSE TERRE", 136., 5.}, {"BASTIA", 
  104., 5.}, {"BESANCON", 228., 7.}, {"BORDEAUX", 458., 
  11.}, {"BOURGES", 142., 5.}, {"CAEN", 282., 8.}, {"CAYENNE", 78., 
  3.}, {"CHAMBERY", 238., 7.}, {"COLMAR", 448., 12.}, {"DIJON", 242., 
  7.}, {"DOUAI", 914., 21.}, {"FORT DE France", 106., 
  5.}, {"GRENOBLE", 334., 9.}, {"LIMOGES", 164., 6.}, {"LYON", 608., 
  15.}, {"METZ", 276., 7.}, {"MONTPELLIER", 470., 11.}, {"NANCY", 
  308., 8.}, {"NIMES", 362., 10.}, {"ORLEANS", 258., 7.}, {"PARIS", 
  2822., 58.}, {"PAU", 268., 7.}, {"POITIERS", 328., 8.}, {"REIMS", 
  252., 7.}, {"RENNES", 738., 17.}, {"RIOM", 260., 7.}, {"ROUEN", 
  358., 10.}, {"SAINT DENIS DE LA REUNION", 200., 6.}, {"TOULOUSE", 
  384., 10.}, {"VERSAILLES", 944., 21.}, {"COM-NOUVELLE-CALEDONIE", 
  160., 6.}}

I would like to know if there is a programatic way to change the string to lower case, the firs letter of each name being capitalized that is RIOM -> Riom, SAINT DENIS DE LA REUNION -> Saint Denis de la Reunion, COM-NOUVELLE-CALEDONIE -> COM-Nouvelle-Caledonie.

Answer 1

Riffing off of J.M.'s nice comment, and assuming there are some words that should be entirely lowercase and some that are entirely uppercase.

canonUpperWord[s_] := 
 StringReplace[
  ToLowerCase[
   s], {WordBoundary ~~ x : LetterCharacter :> ToUpperCase[x]}]

allLower = canonUpperWord /@ {"en", "de", "la", "et"};
allUpper = canonUpperWord /@ {"COM", "DROM", "TOM"};

l /. s_String :> 
  StringReplace[canonUpperWord@s, 
   Join[WordBoundary ~~ # ~~ WordBoundary -> ToLowerCase[#] & /@ 
     allLower, 
    WordBoundary ~~ # ~~ WordBoundary -> ToUpperCase[#] & /@ 
     allUpper]]

---

If you want more fine grained control over splitting of words than WordBoundary, it's possible to of course cook up something yourself using StringSplit and StringJoin:

capFirstWord[s_String] := 
 StringJoin[ToUpperCase[First[#]], Rest[#]] &[
  StringSplit[ToLowerCase[s], ""]]

capTheString[s_String] := 
 StringReplace[s, 
  Map[# -> capFirstWord[#] &, StringSplit[s, {" ", "-", "'"}]]]

altCanonUpper[s_] := capTheString[s]