Need help with a command for changing the following

KREMS|XXXX YYYY|HHHH|
YYYY UUUUU |YYYYYYYYY|IIIIII

need to change it to:
Krems|Xxxxx Yxxx|Hhhh|
Yyyy Uuuuu |Yyyyyyyyy|Iiiiii

I have a large file with proper names that need to be converted to upper and lower case

thanks

The following solution leaves each character as is that follows either start of line or space or bar character, and downshifts all the rest.

I leave the first character as is (rather than upshift) because you may want something like John deHavilland.  But if you do want to upshift all first characters, then remove the #.

awk '{\
newline=""
cap=1
for (i=1;i<=length;i++)
   {x=substr($0,i,1)
    if (x=="|" || x==" ")
       cap=1
    else
       if (cap==1)
          {#x=toupper(x)
           cap=0}
       else
          x=tolower(x)
    newline=newline x}
print newline
}' largefile

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works fine except for if I have the following

18.yyyyyy-kkkkkk|

need it to be
18.Yyyyyy-Kkkkkk|

any ideas on how to include these as well

thanks

Change the if-statement to:

if (x=="|" || x==" " || x=="." || x=="-")

and since you want to upshift (not just downshift), then take out the #.