CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexreplaceexpression
haydnD
haydnD

Reputation: 2293

How to create regular expression that swaps lastname, firstname middle initial

I'm trying to write a regular expression that swaps lastname, firstname middleinitial to firstname lastname.

so, for example 

 doe, john j
    another example: 
 doe, jane

becomes 

john doe
   2nd example results
jane doe

I've tried this: (\w+?), (.+?)(&|-) ((\w+?),(.+?)(&|-))*(.+) and this: ^(\w+), *([\w \.]+)[ ]+-[ ]*(.*)

Neither work.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2026

Answers (2)

sp00m
sp00m

Reputation: 48827

Replacing ^([a-zA-Z]+?),\s*([a-zA-Z]+?)(\s+[a-zA-Z])?$ by $2 $1 should suit your needs.

Note that I didn't use the \w class since it matches underscores (_) and digits too, and I've never seen someone whose name is John_ D0e yet ;)

Upvotes: 1

Ravi Maggon
Ravi Maggon

Reputation: 83

May be this might help:

perl -e '$name = "doe, john j"; $name =~ /(.*?), (.*)/is; $fname = $2; $lname = $1; $fname =~ s/\s.*//is; $name = $fname. " " . $lname; print "$name\n";'

Upvotes: 0

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