NLS_INITCAP

Syntax

Description of the illustration nls_initcap.eps

Purpose

NLS_INITCAP returns char, with the first letter of each word in uppercase, all other letters in lowercase. Words are delimited by white space or characters that are not alphanumeric.

Both char and 'nlsparam' can be any of the data types CHAR, VARCHAR2, NCHAR, or NVARCHAR2. The string returned is of VARCHAR2 data type and is in the same character set as char.

The value of 'nlsparam' can have this form:

'NLS_SORT = sort'

where sort is a named collation. The collation handles special linguistic requirements for case conversions. These requirements can result in a return value of a different length than the char. If you omit 'nlsparam', then this function uses the determined collation of the function.

This function does not support CLOB data directly. However, CLOBs can be passed in as arguments through implicit data conversion.

See Also:

"Data Type Comparison Rules" for more information.
Appendix C in Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide for the collation determination rules for NLS_INITCAP , and for the collation derivation rules, which define the collation assigned to the character return value of this function

Examples

The following examples show how the linguistic sort sequence results in a different return value from the function:

SELECT NLS_INITCAP('ijsland') "InitCap"
  FROM DUAL;

InitCap
-------
Ijsland

SELECT NLS_INITCAP('ijsland', 'NLS_SORT = XDutch') "InitCap"
  FROM DUAL;

InitCap
-------
IJsland