Question

I have the following code as part of a table sorting script. As it is now, it allows names in the “FIRST LAST” format to be sorted on LAST name by “reformatting” to “LAST, FIRST”.

var FullName = fdTableSort.sortText;
function FullNamePrepareData(td, innerText) {
  var a = td.getElementsByTagName('A')[0].innerHTML;
  var s = innerText.split(' ');
  var r = '';
  for (var i = s.length; i > 0; i--) {
    r += s[i - 1] + ', ';
  }
  return r;
}

It currently seems to sort on the name after the LAST space (ex. Jean-Claude Van Damme would sort on ‘D’).

How could I change this script to sort on the FIRST space (so Van Damme shows up in the V’s)?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Instead of the .split() and the loop you could do a replace:

return innerText.replace(/^([^\s]+)\s(.+)$/,"$2, $1");

That is, find all the characters up to the first space with ([^\s]+) and swap it with the characters after the first space (.+), inserting a comma at the same time.