Capitalizing first letter of words while removing spaces (Haskell) - haskell

Question

I'm just starting out in Haskell and this is like the third thing I'm writing, so, naturally, I'm finding myself a little stumped.
I'm trying to write a bit of code that will take a string, delete the spaces, and capitalize each letter of that string.
For example, if I input "this is a test", I would like to get back something like: "thisIsATest"
import qualified Data.Char as Char
toCaps :: String -> String
toCaps [] = []
toCaps xs = filter(/=' ') xs
toCaps (_:xs) = map Char.toUpper xs
I think the method I'm using is wrong. With my code in this order, I am able to remove all the spaces using the filter function, but nothing becomes capitalize.
When I move the filter bit to the very end of the code, I am able to use the map Char.toUpper bit. When I map that function Char.toUpper, it just capitalizes everything "HISISATEST", for example.
I was trying to make use of an if function to say something similar to
if ' ' then map Char.toUpper xs else Char.toLower xs, but that didn't work out for me. I haven't utilized if in Haskell yet, and I don't think I'm doing it correctly. I also know using "xs" is wrong, but I'm not sure how to fix it.
Can anyone offer any pointers on this particular problem?

Answer 1

I think it might be better if you split the problem into smaller subproblems. First we can make a function that, for a given word will capitalize the first character. For camel case, we thus can implement this as:
import Data.Char(toUpper)
capWord :: String -> String
capWord "" = ""
capWord (c:cs) = toUpper c : cs
We can then use words to obtain the list of words:
toCaps :: String -> String
toCaps = go . words
where go [] = ""
go (w:ws) = concat (w : map capWord ws)
For example:
Prelude Data.Char> toCaps "this is a test"
"thisIsATest"
For Pascal case, we can make use of concatMap instead:
toCaps :: String -> String
toCaps = concatMap capWord . words

Answer 2

Inspired by this answer from Will Ness, here's a way to do it that avoids unnecessary Booleans and comparisons:
import qualified Data.Char as Char
toCaps :: String -> String
toCaps = flip (foldr go (const [])) id
where go ' ' acc _ = acc Char.toUpper
go x acc f = f x:acc id
Or more understandably, but perhaps slightly less efficient:
import qualified Data.Char as Char
toCaps :: String -> String
toCaps = go id
where go _ [] = []
go _ (' ':xs) = go Char.toUpper xs
go f (x :xs) = f x:go id xs

Answer 3

There are a number of ways of doing it, but if I were trying to keep it as close to how you've set up your example, I might do something like:
import Data.Char (toUpper)
toCaps :: String -> String
toCaps [] = [] -- base case
toCaps (' ':c:cs) = toUpper c : toCaps cs -- throws out the space and capitalizes next letter
toCaps (c:cs) = c : toCaps cs -- anything else is left as is
This is just using basic recursion, dealing with a character (element of the list) at a time, but if you wanted to use higher-order functions such as map or filter that work on the entire list, then you would probably want to compose them (the way that Willem suggested is one way) and in that case you could probably do without using recursion at all.
It should be noted that this solution is brittle in the sense that it assumes the input string does not contain leading, trailing, or multiple consecutive spaces.

Answer 4

Inspired by Joseph Sible 's answer, a coroutines solution:
import Data.Char
toCamelCase :: String -> String
toCamelCase [] = []
toCamelCase (' ': xs) = toPascalCase xs
toCamelCase (x : xs) = x : toCamelCase xs
toPascalCase :: String -> String
toPascalCase [] = []
toPascalCase (' ': xs) = toPascalCase xs
toPascalCase (x : xs) = toUpper x : toCamelCase xs
Be careful to not start the input string with a space, or you'll get the first word capitalized as well.