Question

I would like to create a script that would add an AD account, but check for duplicates first.

Lets just say
$first = John
$last = Doe

The naming convention is “DoeJ”
If “DoeJ” already exists (example: Jane Doe), then it should be last name, first 2 characters of first name.. example: “DoeJo”. If “DoeJo” already exists, then last name, first 3 characters of first name, and so on…

How can I accomplish this?
I am looking for Sript examples, as I am new to Perl.

Answer 1

I just wanted to hack a bit before going to sleep. I’m sorry, I’m to lazy to explain anything right now, but I’m sure you will find pretty much, when looking for anything special on perldoc.

@Everybody: Feel free to comment, modify, extend, beautify, whatever this code if you feel like that.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Data::Dumper;

my %accounts;

while (<DATA>) {
    my ( $id, $first_name, $last_name ) = split;
    my $account_name = $last_name;

    for my $letter ( split ( "" => $first_name ) ) {
        $account_name .= $letter;
        last unless exists $accounts{ $account_name };
    }

    my ( $prefix, $suffix ) = ( $account_name, 0 );
    while ( exists $accounts{ $account_name } ) {
        $account_name = $prefix . ++$suffix;
    }

    $accounts{ $account_name } = "$id: $first_name $last_name";
}

print Dumper(\%accounts);

__DATA__
1 Jane Doe
2 John Doe
3 Joho Doe
4 John Doe
5 John Doe
6 John Doe