CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regex
Ben Alan
Ben Alan

Reputation: 1685

Regex for matching whitespace between initials

I want to write a regular expression that removes whitespace between initials.

I figured out this expression:

(\w\.\s){2,}

Which will match only occurrences of 2 or more initials:

But I am stuck on how to match ONLY the whitespace within a group of 2 or more initials (except there should still be a space between last name and initials.)

When I remove the spaces, the expected result is that strings will change in the following way:

J. I. Howard --> J.I. Howard
J. Howard --> No change
J.I. Howard -> No change
J. O. B. Franklin --> J.O.B. Franklin

I think capture groups are probably involved somewhere. Any help is appreciated.

Edit: My only other issue is Excluding Mr. and Mrs. from the initial group.

For example:

Mr. L. P. Johnson --> Mr. L.P. Johnson
Mrs. C. Dalloway --> No change

Upvotes: 0

Views: 56

Answers (1)

JvdV
JvdV

Reputation: 75860

It seems as though you can use either a lookbehind in combination with a lookahead:

(?<=[A-Z]\.) (?=[A-Z]\.)

Replace with empty string. See an online demo

Or, capture preceding initial in a capture group and use a backreference in the replacement:

\b([A-Z]\.) (?=[A-Z]\.)

See an online demo.

Upvotes: 2

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