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in reply to Parsing Names in a Text File

I would pass on using a regex for this one. 
while(<FILE>)
{
    @line = split '|'; # split line
    $firstLetter = substr $line[1], 0, 1; #grab first letter
    $lastName = (split(' ', $line[1]))[1]; #split the name entry on wh
+itespace and grab the last name portion
    $name = $firstLetter . ". " . $lastName; #concatenate with period 
+after first letter
}

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Jeremy

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Re: Re: Parsing Names in a Text File
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 15, 2001 at 20:41 UTC
    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
}

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    Of course this assumes that all the names are in a givenname middlenames familyname format.
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[d/l]

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