Trying to capitalize the first character in array of strings, why this is not working?

Question

I'm trying to write a function that converts for example list-style-image to listStyleImage.

I came up with a function but it seems not working. Can anybody point me to the problem here ?

var myStr = "list-style-image";

function camelize(str){
    var newStr = "";    
    var newArr = [];
    if(str.indexOf("-") != -1){
        newArr = str.split("-");
        for(var i = 1 ; i < newArr.length ; i++){
            newArr[i].charAt(0).toUpperCase();
        }       
        newStr = newArr.join("");
    }
    return newStr;
}

console.log(camelize(myStr));

Answer 1

You have to actually re-assign the array element:

    for(var i = 1 ; i < newArr.length ; i++){
        newArr[i] = newArr[i].charAt(0).toUpperCase();
    }       

The "toUpperCase()" function returns the new string but does not modify the original.

You might want to check to make sure that newArr[i] is the empty string first, in case you get an input string with two consecutive dashes.

edit — noted SO contributor @lonesomeday correctly points out that you also need to glue the rest of each string back on:

         newArr[i] = newArr[i].charAt(0).toUpperCase() + newArr[i].substr(1);