Re: Parsing Names...

The thread offered some examples of confusing, mixed format data, which makes parsing problematic. Many years ago I had to do this (in RPG II no less). The classic problem name that we had to consider was Jan Van Breda Koff ( an all SEC guard at the time). If you aren't familiar with the name, know that Van Breda Koff is the dude's last name.
The tapes that we received had names with delimiters (sometimes a comma, sometimes a slash) and names without delimiters. Fortunately most of the names on a single tape were known to be in either first-name first, or last-name first. Analysis of the data took a couple of weeks. Then we had to define logic that tried to determine the format of each names (Is there a non-character in the field? Then that's a delimiter.), then define algorithms for each case. But then we had humans go over the list (James Rich, Rich James?).

So-called modern technology hasn't helped a bit in this situation. My mother got a mass mailing last week addressed to "Mrs. C. Adams". Was that stripped from my middle initial for targeting the "woman of the house?" How much one spends of defining the rules and post-conversion clean-up will depend upon how critical the data is. A mass mailer will try to eliminate duplicates automatically to save postage, but anything more is probably spending a dime to save a nickel (i.e., not worth the effort). For other purposes, it may be worth the cost to scrub the data more thoroughly.

* Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
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615.995.7024
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615.995.1201
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jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



Wilt, Charles wrote:

Here's a nice thread discussing the difficulty of "Parsing Names" with any language....

http://archive.midrange.com/rpg400-l/200601/msg00328.html


Charles Wilt --
Software Engineer
CINTAS Corporation - IT 92B
513.701.1307

wiltc@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Wilt, Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 4:52 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: Parsing Names...

What do you mean "various formats"?

Do you have a fixed set of rules to follow?

Depending on the rules, RPGLE could handle the job nicely using the
%scan() and %subst() built in
functions.

IF the string processing in RPG isn't enough, you can consider calling
APIs to use Regular Expressions
(regex) from RPG or use a language like Java or REXX(?) that has built in
regex processing.

HTH,

Charles Wilt
--
Software Engineer
CINTAS Corporation - IT 92B
513.701.1307

wiltc@xxxxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-
bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David Turnidge
Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 4:20 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Parsing Names...

I have just been tasked with taking Excel files that contain full names

-

in
various formats - and I am to break them into first, middle and last.

Years ago I did a lot of this in Foxpro, but I haven't done that for
longer
than I can remember. So, I'm looking for something in RPG that could do
the
job.

Other than that, I might be able to mess with something in Basic <fear

in

eyes>...

Any recommendations appreciated - Thank you in advance.

Dave Turnidge
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