need a quick script

[bob schmo]

Does anyone have a script lying around that will take firstname lastname
and create first initial lastname: Bob Schmo --> BSchmo

TIA.

Bob

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Does anyone have a script lying around that will take firstname lastname
and create first initial lastname: Bob Schmo --> BSchmo

Probably not. That task is so easy to accomplish that it's unlikely that
somebody would bother to save a script. You'd better write some code.

 

[Michele Dondi]

Subject: need a quick script

How 'bout a bottle of champagne? ;-)

Does anyone have a script lying around that will take firstname lastname
and create first initial lastname: Bob Schmo --> BSchmo

Nope. I doubt anyone has. It's so easy to write one in a few seconds
that there's no reason one should have a similar thing "lying around".


Michele

 

[grocery_stocker]

How 'bout a bottle of champagne? ;-)


Nope. I doubt anyone has. It's so easy to write one in a few seconds
that there's no reason one should have a similar thing "lying around".

I just tried the doing it now. I took me exactly 17 minutes. The thing
that slowed me up was if I had the input of say

Chad Altenburg

I needed to figure out how to store the name the characters 'C' 'h'
'a' 'd' in one array and 'Chad' 'Altenburg' in another array. All
this was due to the fact that I have a poor grasp over regex.

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

I just tried the doing it now. I took me exactly 17 minutes. The thing
that slowed me up was if I had the input of say

Chad Altenburg

I needed to figure out how to store the name the characters 'C' 'h'
'a' 'd' in one array and 'Chad' 'Altenburg' in another array. All
this was due to the fact that I have a poor grasp over regex.

???

sub nameconvert {
my ($first, $last) = split ' ', shift;
substr($first, 0, 1) . $last
}

print nameconvert('Chad Altenburg'), "\n";

 

[Lambik]

grocery_stocker wrote:
sub nameconvert {
my ($first, $last) = split ' ', shift;
substr($first, 0, 1) . $last
}

print nameconvert('Chad Altenburg'), "\n";

Such a hopeless question and i still learned something. I would have done:

return substr($first, 0, 1) . $last

Didn't know the return was optional

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Such a hopeless question and i still learned something. I would have done:

return substr($first, 0, 1) . $last

Didn't know the return was optional

It's optional when I want a sub return the value of the last evaluated
expression.

perldoc -f return

 

[grocery_stocker]

???

sub nameconvert {
my ($first, $last) = split ' ', shift;
substr($first, 0, 1) . $last
}

print nameconvert('Chad Altenburg'), "\n";

--

Here is perl code I wrote this morning

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my $line=<stdin>;

$line =~ s/^\s+//;
@full_name = split(/\W/, $line);

@first_name = split(//,$line);

print "$first_name[0].$full_name[1]\n";

 

[Tad McClellan]

I just tried the doing it now. I took me exactly 17 minutes.

Yikes!


The thing
that slowed me up was if I had the input of say

Chad Altenburg

I needed to figure out how to store the name the characters 'C' 'h' ^^^^^^^^^^^
'a' 'd' in one array and 'Chad' 'Altenburg' in another array.

No you didn't.

perl -le '$_=q(Chad Altenburg); s/^(.)\S+\s+/$1/; print'

All
this was due to the fact that I have a poor grasp over regex.

Right.

 

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

Here is perl code I wrote this morning

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

missing.

my $line=<stdin>;

$line =~ s/^\s+//;
@full_name = split(/\W/, $line);

What if $line contains non-ASCII characters? Those two lines can be
replaced with

my @full_name = split ' ', $line;

See "perldoc -f split"

@first_name = split(//,$line);

No need to create that array. Just use substr() to grasp the first
character of the first name.

print "$first_name[0].$full_name[1]\n";

 

[Jürgen Exner]

Hmm Gunnar, this is not programmer problem but national alphabet
problem. Many nations have 'Ch' as simple character. For example
Czech alphabet is A [...]

C

[...]
H
CH
As I know the similar problem is in Spanish and some other languages.
The Spanish first name Chita sound as english wroted Khyta, then miss
Chita Castro must be transformed to ChCastro, not to CCastro.

This alphabet has single 'C' and 'H' as individual characters, too. How do
you -as a human(!)- know, if the first is supposed to be 'C' or 'Ch'?

jue

 

[Michele Dondi]

Such a hopeless question and i still learned something. I would have done:

return substr($first, 0, 1) . $last

Didn't know the return was optional

It's not optional, it's implicit. I like to rely on this. Somebody
else prefer to be explicit. Some like to be explicit *if* there are
explicity early return()s anyway. That sounds sensible, indeed.


Michele

 

[Michele Dondi]

In the Czech language it is very simple. If I found 'C' followed by 'H' or
'h' then this MUST be 'CH' (or 'Ch'). In other language I don't know.

But isn't it represented with a single gliph, then?


Michele