Deborah's Developer MindScape

I'm working with data collected over eons (e.g. 20-30 yrs... mainframe, to DOS DB, to Win DB...). Names have been converted to UpperCase and I would like to make them "normal" - however, I don't want to end up like many bulk mailing printouts - which fail to put proper casing to names like O' Neil, or Mc Murrey, or de la Roma --- and the end up looking like: O'neil, or Mcmurrey, or De la roma

I suspect this would take a huge name database to match against or to just have a huge typefest where names are corrected via "data entry".

Know any automated way?

thanks for your efforts

Public Class DotNetUtility
   Public Shared Function ConvertingTextCase(ByVal str As String, ByVal stringcase As TextCase) As String
       If str Is Nothing Then
           Return String.Empty
       End If

       Dim ci As System.Globalization.TextInfo = Application.CurrentCulture.TextInfo

       Select Case stringcase

           Case TextCase.LowerCase
               str = ci.ToLower(str)
               Exit Select

           Case TextCase.None
               str = str
               Exit Select

           Case TextCase.TitleCase
               str = ci.ToTitleCase(str)
               Exit Select

           Case TextCase.UpperCase
               str = ci.ToUpper(str)
               Exit Select

       End Select
       Return str
   End Function

   Public Shared Function IsRightToLeft(ByVal str As String) As Boolean
       If str Is Nothing Then
           Exit Function
       End If

       Dim ci As System.Globalization.TextInfo = Application.CurrentCulture.TextInfo
       Dim rtl As Boolean

       If ci.IsRightToLeft = True Then
           rtl = True
       Else
           rtl = False
       End If

       Return rtl
   End Function

   Public Enum TextCase
       None = 0
       LowerCase = 1
       TitleCase = 2
       UpperCase = 3

   End Enum

End Class

Focusing on making text proper case, if the incoming text is all uppercase then .ToLower method is needed.

using the following

 <Runtime.CompilerServices.Extension()> _
   Public Function ProperCase(ByVal value As String) As String
       Dim TI As System.Globalization.TextInfo = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US", False).TextInfo
       Return TI.ToTitleCase(value.ToLower)
   End Function

with this data

       Dim Mary = (From name In New String() _
                   {"MARY JONE'S", "mary jone's", "Mary jone'S"} _
                   Select name.ProperCase).ToList
       Mary.ForEach(AddressOf Console.WriteLine)

Outputs

MARY JONE's
Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's
MARY JONE's
Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's

Now add .ToLower

   <Runtime.CompilerServices.Extension()> _
   Public Function ProperCase(ByVal value As String) As String
       Dim TI As System.Globalization.TextInfo = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US", False).TextInfo
       Return TI.ToTitleCase(value.ToLower)
   End Function

We get proper casing correct

Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's
Mary Jone's

Good! But the code could not get me to convert my Heading to either lower or upper.  Any suggestions?