I'd recommend taking a slight variant on this in order to handle the middle name problem:

while(<FILE>)
{
my @line = split '|'; # split line
#so far as above apart from my declaration
#now split on whitespace
my @names = split ' ',$line[1];
#same idiom for getting the first letter
my $firstletter = substr ($names[0],0,1);
#then get the last item in the name array
my $lastname = $names[-1];
#now do whatever you want to do with the letter and lastname
}
[download]

Of course this assumes that all the names are in a givenname middlenames familyname format.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.