Question

Fairly simple question I need to take a string containing, for example, “Bob Smith” and return “Bob S.” – or “Javier de Luca” and return “Javier de L.”. In other words, abbreviate the last word in a string to just the first initial and add a period.

Here’s what I have – it works, but it seems clumsy.

str = str.split(' ')
str[str.length - 1] = "#{str.last[0]}."
str = str.join(' ')

Surely, there’s a more elegant way.

Answer 1

>> "Bob Smith".sub(/(.+\b.).+\z/, '\1.')
=> "Bob S."
>> "Javier de Luca".sub(/(.+\b.).+\z/, '\1.')
=> "Javier de L."

This regular expression captures the entire string until the second character of the last word. It then replaces this string with the capture plus a period ala \1.