Convert first character of each word to upper case

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

Is there any function(Bash) out there that can convert the first character of each word to upper case?

Similar to php function Eg :
$foo = "hello world!";
$foo = ucwords($foo); //Hello Word

Manage to Google out this example :

first=`echo "hello world place"|nawk '{print substr($1,1,1)}'|tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]'`

however it only will display "Hello". Rest of the word are truncated. May I know what went wrong in the coding?

Thank you for the help in advance.

2 
#!/bin/bash
foo="hello world place"
awk '{for(i=0;++i<=NF;){OFS=(i==NF)?RS:FS;printf toupper(substr($i,0,1)) substr($i,2) OFS }}' <<< "$foo"
Hello World Place
3

Without using any external commands:

$ _capwords the quick brown fox
$ printf "%s\n" "$_CAPWORDS"
The Quick Brown Fox

I have these functions in a library:

_upr()
{
    _UPR=
    case $1 in
        a*) _UPR=A ;;        b*) _UPR=B ;;
        c*) _UPR=C ;;        d*) _UPR=D ;;
        e*) _UPR=E ;;        f*) _UPR=F ;;
        g*) _UPR=G ;;        h*) _UPR=H ;;
        i*) _UPR=I ;;        j*) _UPR=J ;;
        k*) _UPR=K ;;        l*) _UPR=L ;;
        m*) _UPR=M ;;        n*) _UPR=N ;;
        o*) _UPR=O ;;        p*) _UPR=P ;;
        q*) _UPR=Q ;;        r*) _UPR=R ;;
        s*) _UPR=S ;;        t*) _UPR=T ;;
        u*) _UPR=U ;;        v*) _UPR=V ;;
        w*) _UPR=W ;;        x*) _UPR=X ;;
        y*) _UPR=Y ;;        z*) _UPR=Z ;;
         *) _UPR=${1%${1#?}} ;;
    esac
}

_cap()
{
  _upr "$1"
  _CAP=$_UPR${1#?}
}

_capwords()
{
  unset _CAPWORDS
  set -f
  for word in $*
  do
    _cap "$word"
    _CAPWORDS="$_CAPWORDS${_CAPWORDS:+ }$_CAP"
  done
}
4 
foo="hello world place"
 
echo $foo | tr " " "\n" | nawk ' { out = out" "toupper(substr($0,1,1))substr($0,2) } END{ print substr(out,2) } '
 
Hello World Place