CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#regex
dotNetNewbie
dotNetNewbie

Reputation: 789

Regex to extract initials from Name

eg. if the Name is: John Deer
the Initials should be: JD

I can use substrings to perform this check on the Initials field, but wondering if I can write a regular expression for it? And is writing a regular expression a better idea than doing it using strings methods?

Upvotes: 14

Views: 25962

Answers (11)

Junaid Bashir
Junaid Bashir

Reputation: 172

Simplest version in kotlin

val initials: String = if (str.size > 1) str[0][0].toString() + str[1][0].toString() else str[0][0].toString()

Upvotes: 0

Mosè Bottacini
Mosè Bottacini

Reputation: 4216

My solution below(C# regex dialect)

^\s*(?>(?<First>\w)\w*).*?((?<Last>\w)\w*)?\s*$

Will match in the named groups First and Last the first letter of the first word and the first later of the last word respectively, happy ignoring all the words that may be in between and not caring if there are trailing or leading spaces

No replace are needed, the match occurs in one line and you can extract the letter accessing the matching group by name like this

var displayName = "Nick 'Goose' Bradshaw";
var initialsRule = new Regex(@"^\s*(?>(?<First>\w)\w*).*?((?<Last>\w)\w*)?\s*$");
var matches = initialsRule.Match(displayName);
var initials = $"{matches.Groups["First"].Value}{matches.Groups["Last"].Value}";
//initials: "NB"

Upvotes: 0

Steve Chambers
Steve Chambers

Reputation: 39404

Here's an alternative with an emphasis on keeping it simple:

    /// <summary>
    /// Get initials from the supplied names string.
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="names">Names separated by whitespace</param>
    /// <param name="separator">Separator between initials (e.g "", "." or ". ")</param>
    /// <returns>Upper case initials (with separators in between)</returns>
    public static string GetInitials(string names, string separator)
    {
        // Extract the first character out of each block of non-whitespace
        Regex extractInitials = new Regex(@"\s*([^\s])[^\s]*\s*");
        return extractInitials.Replace(names, "$1" + separator).ToUpper();
    }

There is a question of what to do if the supplied names aren't as expected. Personally I think it should just return the first character from each chunk of text that isn't whitespace. E.g:

1Steve 2Chambers               => 12
harold mcDonald                => HM
David O'Leary                  => DO
David O' Leary                 => DOL
Ronnie "the rocket" O'Sullivan => R"RO

There will be those who'd argue for more sophisticated/complex techniques (e.g. to handle the last one better) but IMO this is really a data cleansing issue.

Upvotes: 2

Olli
Olli

Reputation: 375

This is my approach:

public static string GetInitials(string names) {
    // Extract the first character out of each block of non-whitespace
    // exept name suffixes, e.g. Jr., III. The number of initials is not limited.
    return Regex.Replace(names, @"(?i)(?:^|\s|-)+([^\s-])[^\s-]*(?:(?:\s+)(?:the\s+)?(?:jr|sr|II|2nd|III|3rd|IV|4th)\.?$)?", "$1").ToUpper();
}

Handled cases:

// Mason Zhwiti                               -> MZ
// mason zhwiti                               -> MZ
// Mason G Zhwiti                             -> MGZ
// Mason G. Zhwiti                            -> MGZ
// John Queue Public                          -> JQP
// John-Queue Public                          -> JQP
// John Q. Public, Jr.                        -> JQP
// John Q Public Jr.                          -> JQP
// John Q Public Jr                           -> JQP
// John Q Public Jraroslav                    -> JQPJ
// Thurston Howell III                        -> TH
// Thurston Howell, III                       -> TH
// Thurston Howell the III                    -> TH
// Malcolm X                                  -> MX
// A Ron                                      -> AR
// A A Ron                                    -> AAR
// Madonna                                    -> M
// Chris O'Donnell                            -> CO
// Chris O' Donnell                           -> COD
// Malcolm McDowell                           -> MM
// Éric Ígor                                  -> ÉÍ
// 행운의 복숭아                               -> 행복

Not handled cases:

// James Henry George Michael III the second  -> JHGMIts
// Robert "Rocky" Balboa, Sr.                 -> R"B
// 1Bobby 2Tables                             -> 12 (is it a real name?)

Upvotes: 9

Mason G. Zhwiti
Mason G. Zhwiti

Reputation: 6540

Here is my solution. My goal was not to provide the simplest solution, but one that can take a variety of (sometimes weird) name formats, and generate the best guess at a first and last name initial (or in the case of mononymous people) a single initial.

I also tried to write it in a way that is relatively international-friendly, with unicode regexes, although I don't have any experience in generating initials for many kinds of foreign names (e.g. Chinese), though it should at least generate something usable to represent the person, in under two characters. For example, feeding it a name in Korean like "행운의 복숭아" will yield 행복 as you might have expected (although perhaps that is not right way to do it in Korean culture).

/// <summary>
/// Given a person's first and last name, we'll make our best guess to extract up to two initials, hopefully
/// representing their first and last name, skipping any middle initials, Jr/Sr/III suffixes, etc. The letters 
/// will be returned together in ALL CAPS, e.g. "TW". 
/// 
/// The way it parses names for many common styles:
/// 
/// Mason Zhwiti                -> MZ
/// mason lowercase zhwiti      -> MZ
/// Mason G Zhwiti              -> MZ
/// Mason G. Zhwiti             -> MZ
/// John Queue Public           -> JP
/// John Q. Public, Jr.         -> JP
/// John Q Public Jr.           -> JP
/// Thurston Howell III         -> TH
/// Thurston Howell, III        -> TH
/// Malcolm X                   -> MX
/// A Ron                       -> AR
/// A A Ron                     -> AR
/// Madonna                     -> M
/// Chris O'Donnell             -> CO
/// Malcolm McDowell            -> MM
/// Robert "Rocky" Balboa, Sr.  -> RB
/// 1Bobby 2Tables              -> BT
/// Éric Ígor                   -> ÉÍ
/// 행운의 복숭아                 -> 행복
/// 
/// </summary>
/// <param name="name">The full name of a person.</param>
/// <returns>One to two uppercase initials, without punctuation.</returns>
public static string ExtractInitialsFromName(string name)
{
    // first remove all: punctuation, separator chars, control chars, and numbers (unicode style regexes)
    string initials = Regex.Replace(name, @"[\p{P}\p{S}\p{C}\p{N}]+", "");

    // Replacing all possible whitespace/separator characters (unicode style), with a single, regular ascii space.
    initials = Regex.Replace(initials, @"\p{Z}+", " ");

    // Remove all Sr, Jr, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX at the end of names
    initials = Regex.Replace(initials.Trim(), @"\s+(?:[JS]R|I{1,3}|I[VX]|VI{0,3})$", "", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);

    // Extract up to 2 initials from the remaining cleaned name.
    initials = Regex.Replace(initials, @"^(\p{L})[^\s]*(?:\s+(?:\p{L}+\s+(?=\p{L}))?(?:(\p{L})\p{L}*)?)?$", "$1$2").Trim();

    if (initials.Length > 2)
    {
        // Worst case scenario, everything failed, just grab the first two letters of what we have left.
        initials = initials.Substring(0, 2);
    }

    return initials.ToUpperInvariant();
}

Upvotes: 25

Jay
Jay

Reputation: 3355

[a-z]+[a-z]+\b which will net you The first two letters of each name...

where name = 'Greg Henry' = 'G H' or 'James Smith' 'J S'

Then you can split on ' ' and join on ''

This even works on names like

'James Henry George Michael' = 'J H G M'

'James Henry George Michael III the second' = 'J H G M III'

If you want to avoid the split utilize [a-z]+[a-z]+\b ?

But then names like Jon Michael Jr. The 3rd will be = JMJr.T3 where as the above option allows you to get 'The', 'the' and '3rd' if you wanted ..

If you really wanted to be fancy you could use the (\b[a-zA-Z])[a-zA-Z]* ? to match just the parts of the name and then replace with the former.

Upvotes: 0

Nevyn
Nevyn

Reputation: 2683

Personally, I prefer this Regex

Regex initials = new Regex(@"(\b[a-zA-Z])[a-zA-Z]* ?");
string init = initials.Replace(nameString, "$1");
//Init = "JD"

That takes care of initials, and whitespace removal (thats the ' ?' at the end there).

The only thing you have to worry about are titles and puctuation like Jr. or Sr., or Mrs....etc etc. Some people do include those in their full names

Upvotes: 23

kevlar1818
kevlar1818

Reputation: 3125

How about this:

        string name = "John Clark MacDonald";
        var parts = name.Split(' ');
        string initials = "";

        foreach (var part in parts)
        {
            initials += Regex.Match(part, "[A-Z]");
            Console.WriteLine(part + " --> " + Regex.Match(part,"[A-Z]"));
        }
        Console.WriteLine("Final initials: " + initials);
        Console.ReadKey();

This allows for optional middle names, and works for multiple capitalizations, as shown above.

Upvotes: 0

RobertMS
RobertMS

Reputation: 1155

Yes, use a regex. You can use the Regex.Match and Regex.Match.Groups methods to find matches and then to extract the matching values you need - the initials in this case. Finding and extracting values will happen at the same time.

Upvotes: 0

IanNorton
IanNorton

Reputation: 7282

How about this?

var initials = Regex.Replace( "John Deer", "[^A-Z]", "" );

Upvotes: 2

COLD TOLD
COLD TOLD

Reputation: 13579

try this one

(^| )([^ ])([^ ])*','\2')

or this one

 public static string ToInitials(this string str)
    {
      return Regex.Replace(str, @"^(?'b'\w)\w*,\s*(?'a'\w)\w*$|^(?'a'\w)\w*\s*(?'b'\w)\w*$", "${a}${b}", RegexOptions.Singleline)
    }

http://www.kewney.com/posts/software-development/using-regular-expressions-to-get-initials-from-a-string-in-c-sharp

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions