How to extract first and last name from a string

Question

I'm trying to figure out the regex with powershell, and can't seem to get what I want.

Given the string...

John Doe - Specialist - Data - Person

I want to extract the first and list name from this string and add it to an array. I am trying the following...

$firstName = @()
$lastName = @()
$string = 'John Doe - Specialist - Data - Person'

$firstName += $string -replace '\s+*','' #does not work
$lastName += $string -replace '\*\s+\*','\*' #does not work

Update

So far, this works...

$firstName, $lastName = $string -split "\s"
$lastName, $junk = $lastName -split "\s"
$firstNames += $firstName
$lastNames += $lastName

But it's messy, and I want to know if there is a better way to handle this.

Answer 1

This worked fine for me:

PS C:\scripts> $fullname = "John Mathew Kenneth"    
PS C:\scripts> $firstname, $lastname = $fullname -split " " , 2    
PS C:\scripts> $firstname
John
PS C:\scripts> $lastname
Mathew Kenneth

Answer 2

Try this:

$string = 'John Doe - Specialist - Data - Person'
$firstName = $string.split(" ")[0]
$lastName = $string.split(" ")[1]
$firstName
$lastName

This will output

John
Doe

It splits on space and selects the first and last name

Edit based on your Code:

$string = 'John Doe - Specialist - Data - Person'
$firstNames += $string.split(" ")[0]
$lastNames += $string.split(" ")[1]