RE: First / Last name Parsing... routines.

["Dennis Lovelady" <iseries@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Are there commas in this field?  Any rules that you'd like to share, so we
have an idea of what data you're expecting in this field?

This is off the top of my head and untested.  Here, name(x) could be first,
middle, last ... depending upon how you use them within the program...

Given that:
    incomingName is the name to be parsed
    fullName is a varying length character field, local or otherwise unused
    name is an array of (optionally varying length) character fields with
more than one (3?) elements.

On exit
    i will contain the number of name elements that are populated + 1
    name array will have the portions of the name broken out where separated
by 
         any number of spaces

Names like Julio de Vegas et cetera may give you fits.



fullName = %Trim(incomingName) ;
For I = 1 to %Elem(name) ;
   Clear name(I) ;
EndFOR ;
I = 1 ;
DoW I < %Elem(name) and %Len(fullName) > 0 ;
   P = %Scan(' ': fullName) ;
   If (p > 0) ;
      Name(i) = %Trim(%Subst(fullName: 1: p)) ;
      fullName = %Trim(%Subst(fullName: p)) ;
      I += 1 ;
   EndIF ;
EndDO ;
If name(I) = '' ;
   name(I) = fullName ;
Else ;
   Name(I) += ' ' + fullName ;
EndIF

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"The Yankees, as I told you later, are in a slump."
        -- baseball great Dizzy Dean 


> Does anybody have a link or procedure they are willing to share?
>
> I have a field that contains a name (ie:  first mi last  or first last or
a
> ton of every variation you can think of) But I need it broken out in 3
fields
> first mi lastname.
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks, Tim
>
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