Re: Converting names & street names

Have the program change the the fields and throw out a list of the
apostrophe's, McKees, Van Nests, and the like. Then have an operator
hammer thru them. We did something similar when converting data into a CRM
package a few years back.

Nick W. Mart

How many total names in the file, and is this a one-time change-over?

It is amazing how fast a good operator can go through a thousand names,
if you present them for her/him to read & change easily on the screen.

If its a one time deal, a brute force solution may be a lot cheaper and
quicker in the end.



Scott Klement wrote:

Thanks for your reply Tommy, but the main problem I am going to have is
with the names like O'Donnell McGuyver etc where the name contains more
than one upper case character.

Even worse is something  like "Herman Van der Staey".  In that case the
last name is 3 words, and one of them isn't capitalized, but the others
are.  I can't think of an algorithm that would understand how to
properly
capitalize all names.

The truth is, names don't follow a set pattern for capitalization. You
have to deall with them on a case-by-case basis.  So you'd almost need a
database of every possible name and how it's capitalized....  or at
least
a database of the ones that don't follow the rule of "first letter of
every word."   This wouldn't be a minor undertaking.

I suggest looking for a commercial package unless a "close enough"
routine
is acceptable.

--
-----------------------------
Booth Martin
www.martinvt.com
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