Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!newsfeed.xs4all.nl!newsfeed5.news.xs4all.nl!xs4all!post.news.xs4all.nl!not-for-mail
Date: Tue, 22 May 2012 20:30:45 +0200
From: Luuk <luuk@invalid.lan>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:12.0) Gecko/20120428 Thunderbird/12.0.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
Newsgroups: comp.lang.php
Subject: Re: PHP Concatenate
References: <9ee80c71-db8e-4adf-8f59-03d2749fbe5b@googlegroups.com> <4FBA9549.7090409@invalid.lan> <jpg0cd$mh3$1@dont-email.me> <slrnjrn5uu.4ci.hellsop@nibelheim.ninehells.com> <858nr71tltm4060g71pad72js50kj4ugs5@news.eternal-september.org>
In-Reply-To: <858nr71tltm4060g71pad72js50kj4ugs5@news.eternal-september.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <kj2t89-squ.ln1@luuk.invalid.lan>
Lines: 66
NNTP-Posting-Host: 2001:980:9089:1:4c18:7c29:b17b:63d5
X-Trace: 1337712001 news.xs4all.nl 6952 [2001:980:9089:1:4c18:7c29:b17b:63d5]:59239
X-Complaints-To: abuse@xs4all.nl
Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.php:6123

On 22-05-2012 16:21, Paul Herber wrote:
> On Tue, 22 May 2012 08:42:54 -0500, "Peter H. Coffin" <hellsop@ninehells.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, 22 May 2012 08:21:27 -0400, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
>>> On 5/21/2012 3:19 PM, Luuk wrote:
>>>> On 21-05-2012 20:47, Kevin Davis wrote:
>>>>> Hi there,
>>>>>
>>>>> Here is what I'm trying to do.. I'm trying to merge the first and
>>>>> last name (that I can do) into an email address. But what I'm
>>>>> trying to do is to drop the middle initial. If the entry was from a
>>>>> form, I would have no problem, but the data will be uploaded from a
>>>>> different source, how would I go about dropping the middle initial?
>>>>>
>>>>> Would I use regex??
>>>>>
>>>>> Thank you,
>>>>> Kevin
>>>>
>>>> $name="Kevin R. Davis";
>>>> $a=split(" ",$name);
>>>> print $a[0]." ".$a[count($a)-1];
>>>>
>>>> It should print:
>>>> Kevin Davis
>>>
>>> What about "John Smith Jr"?
>>
>> Or "Carlos Salinas de Gortari"?
>>
>> To cut to the important point, "dropping middle initial" is a kind
>> of simple problem surround by worm-cans with very weak lids. Pretty
>> much the least damaging thing you can do is drop punctuation and any
>> single-letter (not single character, just Latin letter) words, using two
>> passes with regexp processing. Usually if someone has put something into
>> a field on form asking for their name, whatever they've put there is
>> important to them.
>>
>> You'll still piss off will.i.am of The Black-Eyed Peas even with that
>> simple step.
> 
> and anyone with the surname De'Ath.
> 
> 
> 

<?php
$name="Kevin R. De'Ath";
$a=split(" ",$name);
print $a[0]." ".$a[count($a)-1];
print "\n";

// Second solution, so J. R. R. Tolkien is also handled correctly
$name="J. R. R. Tolkien";
$a=split(" ",$name);
for ($f=0; $f<count($a); $f++)
        if (substr($a[$f],strlen($a[$f])-1,1)!="." or $f==0) print
$a[$f]." ";
print "\n";

?>


output:
Kevin De'Ath
J. Tolkien