Bug Report: proper() doesn't capitalize the first letter of words preceded by punctuation.

Question

My teammate found a bug when using proper() to display a label; a word preceded by a non-alphabetic character will not be converted to proper case. 
 If the 11th floor is home to the HR department. 
 
 Floor.id = 11 
 Floor.department.name = "human resources"

We would expect: 
 Floor 11 ( Human Resources) 
 but instead get: 
 Floor 11 ( h uman Resources) 
 
 To reproduce the issue, I used this expression to check capitalization: 
 proper(
 "I am reporting that ""proper() coNverts each [alphabetic] cHaRacter into ProPeR caSe " & "(unless a non-alphabetic character precedes it)"""
), 
 
 Where I would expect: 
 I Am Reporting That "Proper() Converts Each [Alphabetic] Character Into Proper Case (Unless A Non-alphabetic Character Precedes It) 
 It's returning: 
 I Am Reporting That " p roper() Converts Each [ a lphabetic] Character Into Proper Case ( u nless A Non-alphabetic Character Precedes It) 
 
 Is proper() working as designed? 
 Side note: 22.4 documentation reads, "Converts each character in the text into proper case, meaning it will capitalize the first first letter of every word and convert the rest into lowercase. ( https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/22.4/fnc_text_proper.html" )

Mike Schmitt · Accepted Answer

I'm not sure this is a "bug" so much as a constraint, possibly crossed with a lack of specificity in the documention (re: the snippet you copied). I suppose the documentation should be rephrased to something more like, "capatialize the first non-whitespace character, where applicable, of every whole word in the string". I suppose you could argue that the function should specifically exclude non-alphabet characters from its logic, though it seems like that might be expecting too much from a function like this.

Chris · Answer

I agree that you will get what you get with fn!proper(). However, we can create a more robust rule that removes and replaces certain preceding characters to allow proper() to function more intuitively. This could be optimized, quick and dirty solution to get you going: 
 a!localVariables(
 local!data: "I am reporting that ""proper() coNverts each [alphabetic] cHaRacter into ProPeR caSe " & "(unless a non-alphabetic character precedes it)""",
 local!ignore: {"(",")","""","[","]","-"}, /* preceding characters you want to ignore */
 local!removals: a!flatten(
 a!forEach(
 items: 1+enumerate(len(local!data)),
 expression: a!localVariables(
 local!currentChar: charat(local!data,fv!item),
 if(
 contains(local!ignore,local!currentChar),
 {
 index: fv!item,
 char: local!currentChar
 },
 {}
 )
 )
 )
 ),
 local!replaced: if(
 rule!APN_isEmpty(local!removals),
 local!data,
 joinarray(
 a!forEach(
 items: 1+enumerate(len(local!data)),
 expression: if(
 contains(tointeger(local!removals.index),fv!item),
 " ",
 charat(local!data,fv!item)
 )
 )
 )
 ),

 local!proper: proper(local!replaced),

 joinarray(
 a!forEach(
 items: 1+enumerate(len(local!proper)),
 expression: a!localVariables(
 local!replacementIndex: wherecontains(fv!item,tointeger(local!removals.index)),
 if(
 rule!APN_isBlank(local!replacementIndex),
 charat(local!proper,fv!item),
 property(index(local!removals,local!replacementIndex,{}),"char")
 )
 )
 )
 )
)

Bug Report: proper() doesn't capitalize the first letter of words preceded by punctuation.

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