Hi
rtremaine,
If you're sure there's always going to be whitespace between names, you could do something like this:
sub parse_name {
my ($namestr) = @_;
my @names = split(/\s+/, $namestr);
my ($last, $first, $middle) = ($names[0], $names[1], $names[2]);
$last =~ s/,$//;
$middle ||= "";
return [ $first, $middle, $last ];
}
Note that the subroutine also trims any comma from the end of the last name, and returns a blank middle name if one wasn't defined.
Now call the subroutine parse_name() with a name string, and you'll get a reference to a list containing the first, middle, and last names. For example:
+
use strict;
use warnings;
+
my @data = (
'Smith, John',
'Thompson, Frank A',
'Smith, John A JR',
'Smith, John A III',
'Smith, John A (Johnny)',
);
foreach my $name (@data) {
my $p = parse_name($name);
printf "First(%10.10s) Middle(%5.5s) Last(%10.10s)\n", @$p;
}
__END__
Output:
First( John) Middle( ) Last( Smith)
First( Frank) Middle( A) Last( Thompson)
First( John) Middle( A) Last( Smith)
First( John) Middle( A) Last( Smith)
First( John) Middle( A) Last( Smith)
Update: Added test code.
s''(q.S:$/9=(T1';s;(..)(..);$..=substr+crypt($1,$2),2,3;eg;print$..$/
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