MySQL - Stored Function - Uppercase First Character

This MySQL stored function can be used to change the first character in a string to uppercase much like PHP's ucfirst() function.

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1. DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS uc_first;  
2.   
3. DELIMITER $$  
4.   
5. CREATE FUNCTION uc_first(str LONGTEXT)     
6.     RETURNS LONGTEXT     
7.     BEGIN     
8.         SET @firstChar = SUBSTRING(str, 1,1);     
9.         SET @remainingChars = SUBSTRING(str, 2);     
10.         RETURN CONCAT(UPPER(@firstChar), @remainingChars);     
11.     END  
12.   
13. $$  
14.   
15. DELIMITER ;