TitleCase.pl

#!/usr/bin/perl

# 	This filter changes all words to Title Caps, and attempts to be clever
#	about *un*capitalizing small words like a/an/the in the input.
#
#	The list of "small words" which are not capped comes from
#	the New York Times Manual of Style, plus 'vs' and 'v'. 
#
#	10 May 2008
#	Original version by John Gruber:
#	http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/title_case
#
#	28 July 2008
#	Re-written and much improved by Aristotle Pagaltzis:
#	http://plasmasturm.org/code/titlecase/
#
#   Full change log at __END__.
#
#	License: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
#


use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use open qw( :encoding(UTF-8) :std );


my @small_words = qw( (?<!q&)a an and as at(?!&t) but by en for if in of on or the to v[.]? via vs[.]? );
my $small_re = join '|', @small_words;

my $apos = qr/ (?: ['’] [[:lower:]]* )? /x;

while ( <> ) {
	s{\A\s+}{}, s{\s+\z}{};

	$_ = lc $_ if not /[[:lower:]]/;

	s{
		\b (_*) (?:
			( (?<=[ ][/\\]) [[:alpha:]]+ [-_[:alpha:]/\\]+ |   # file path or
			  [-_[:alpha:]]+ [@.:] [-_[:alpha:]@.:/]+ $apos )  # URL, domain, or email
			|
			( (?i: $small_re ) $apos )                         # or small word (case-insensitive)
			|
			( [[:alpha:]] [[:lower:]'’()\[\]{}]* $apos )       # or word w/o internal caps
			|
			( [[:alpha:]] [[:alpha:]'’()\[\]{}]* $apos )       # or some other word
		) (_*) \b
	}{
		$1 . (
		  defined $2 ? $2         # preserve URL, domain, or email
		: defined $3 ? "\L$3"     # lowercase small word
		: defined $4 ? "\u\L$4"   # capitalize word w/o internal caps
		: $5                      # preserve other kinds of word
		) . $6
	}xeg;


	# Exceptions for small words: capitalize at start and end of title
	s{
		(  \A [[:punct:]]*         # start of title...
		|  [:.;?!][ ]+             # or of subsentence...
		|  [ ]['"“‘(\[][ ]*     )  # or of inserted subphrase...
		( $small_re ) \b           # ... followed by small word
	}{$1\u\L$2}xig;

	s{
		\b ( $small_re )      # small word...
		(?= [[:punct:]]* \Z   # ... at the end of the title...
		|   ['"’”)\]] [ ] )   # ... or of an inserted subphrase?
	}{\u\L$1}xig;

	# Exceptions for small words in hyphenated compound words
	## e.g. "in-flight" -> In-Flight
	s{
		\b
		(?<! -)					# Negative lookbehind for a hyphen; we don't want to match man-in-the-middle but do want (in-flight)
		( $small_re )
		(?= -[[:alpha:]]+)		# lookahead for "-someword"
	}{\u\L$1}xig;

	## # e.g. "Stand-in" -> "Stand-In" (Stand is already capped at this point)
	s{
		\b
		(?<!…)					# Negative lookbehind for a hyphen; we don't want to match man-in-the-middle but do want (stand-in)
		( [[:alpha:]]+- )		# $1 = first word and hyphen, should already be properly capped
		( $small_re )           # ... followed by small word
		(?!	- )					# Negative lookahead for another '-'
	}{$1\u$2}xig;

	print "$_";
}

__END__

Changes:

Thu, 06 Nov 2014

- Removed /o switch from substitutions; it's out-dated and described now as only "pretending" to optimize
- Special cases for small words in two-word compounds, like "stand-in" and "in-flight" (but not "man-in-the-middle")

Any chance of getting a PHP version of this? Special cases for words in two-word compounds are pretty sweet.

@NewJenk Here you go :)

https://gist.github.com/HipsterJazzbo/2532c93a18db7451b0cec529c95b53c4

Javascript version here: https://github.com/bdougherty/better-title-case

Ruby, JavaScript, and Objective-C versions: https://www.vengefulcow.com/titlecase/