RE: Name Parse

Scanning for white space and/or delimiters can do most of it, but you will
need a table of titles/honorifics so you can look up the first and last
element against things like "Ms", "Esq", "III" etc; a table of surnames with
embedded white space like "von der Linden."  Depending on how precise you
need to be, this isn't a trivial task.

You can do it with arrays, but you don't have to.  Check out the scan and
substring features of RPG.  There's also a C library function you can
prototype that breaks down a character string into tokens.  I've never tried
it, but I've seen endorsements for it on this list.

Chances are, you'll never perfect this routine.  It's one of those Holy
Grail things like routines for converting all caps to mixed case or (on a
different level of complexity all together) grammar checking.

I have a friend who has built a career on match coding names and addresses
for mailing list processing.  He's been refining his parsing software for
over ten years and shows no sign of being satisfied with the results.  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: bill totz [mailto:robsurge@hotmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 12:21 PM
> To: RPG400-L@midrange.com
> Subject: Name Parse
> 
> 
> Hello List
> 
> We have been given the unfortunate task of parsing a non 
> standard naming 
> format and breaking it down into the serparte parts of first 
> middle last and 
> surname (if one is present.)
> 
> The name field is a 40 byte field formatted "LAST SUR/FIRST MID/"
> 
> I basically just want 4 fields back containing the first 
> middle last and 
> surname(if present).
> 
> We are attempting to accomplish this by moving the string 
> into an array, and 
> using an index to count through the array a byte at a time 
> and setting 
> indicators when certain conditions are met, such as a blank, 
> or a '/'. 
> However, my partner and I are incredibly new to the RPG 
> world, and are 
> getting lost in the complexity of writing this routine. We are devout 
> followers of this list and would appreciate any available 
> help, so that we 
> can keep our jobs. :)
> 
> ______________________________________________________
>> 
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