Question

Trying to write a regex that can parse a full name and split it into first name, middle name, last name. This should be easy but its pretty hard once you see the kind of names I have to parse. Now I could write a big long regex that takes into accout all these different cases but I think a smaller dynamic regex is possible and that’s why I am here asking for some help.

I think these are all of the types of names I have to grab.

Some example names that need to be parsed are(each have three commas at the end):

(first name) (middle intial). (last name),,, //one middle initial with period after
(first name) (last name),,,                  //simple first and last
(No name),,,                                 //no name
(first name) (last name)-(last name),,,      //two last names separated by a dash
(first name) (middle initial). (middle initial). (last name),,,   //two middle initials with space inbetween
(first name) (last name w/ apostrophe),,,    //Last names with apostrophes 
(first name) (Middle name) (Last name),,,    //first middle and last name

Answer 1

No code, but try:

1. use substr to remove the last three characters off $name,
2. @array = split /[\s+.]+/, $name # split on space and/or dots (as mentioned above) into an array,
3. if ($array[0]) then you have a name,
4. $lastname = pop @array; # gets the last (or only) name
5. $firstname = shift @array if scalar @array; # first name is first element
6. @array now contains all middle names and/or initials

Something like that, anyway…