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Splitting up complex names
Post by hinckleyj on Apr 3rd, 2016, 06:11am

Hi All,

Is there a way to split up a name into separate strings when the name may contain more than 2 elements?

I know how to deal with 2 elements, such as John Smith, for example:-

rem Separate names into first and last
input "Enter the full name ";FullName$
Posn% = instr(FullName$, " ")
FirstName$ = left$(FullName$, Posn%-1)
Surname$ = mid$(FullName$, Posn%+1)
print "Your first name is ";FirstName$
print "Your surname is ";Surname$
end

But how would you handle names like:-
John van Smith
John van de Burgh
John Paul Bob Smith Jr.

Thanks to anyone who has had the same issue before and solved it.

Regards,

John
Re: Splitting up complex names
Post by Ian Kings on Apr 3rd, 2016, 10:20am

John,

You can use Richards split function available in the STRINGLIB.

Here's a short example.

Code:
      REM FN_split(A$, d$, RETURN a$())
      REM
      REM Split a string at specified delimiter:
      REM A$ is the string to be split
      REM d$ is the delimiter at which to split
      REM a$() is an array to receive the parts (created if necessary)
      REM The returned value is the number of array elements written

      INSTALL @lib$+"STRINGLIB"

      fullname$="John Paul Smith"
      result=FN_split(fullname$, " ", parts$())

      FOR i=0 TO result-1
        PRINT parts$(i)
      NEXT i

      END


Ian
Re: Splitting up complex names
Post by hinckleyj on Apr 3rd, 2016, 8:18pm

Hi Ian,

Thank you.

That's worked great!

Appreciate your help.

Regards,
John.
Re: Splitting up complex names
Post by JGHarston on Apr 10th, 2016, 3:00pm

on Apr 3rd, 2016, 06:11am, hinckleyj wrote:
Is there a way to split up a name into separate strings when the name may contain more than 2 elements?
...
But how would you handle names like:-
John van Smith
John van de Burgh
John Paul Bob Smith Jr.

Some of that requires human interaction, or a degree of artificial intelligence. For example, how does a program know which part of "John van de Burgh" is the surname? Is he Mr Burgh, first name John, middle names van de? With that example you can program in that components with a lower-case initial letter are part of the surname, but then you get Mao Ze Dung. Is he Mr Dung or Mr Ze Dung?

I've written programs that parse Census records and spit out regular data fields. When the source has had the entire name in one field I parse it backwards looking for the first space, or the last space followed by a lower case letter.

Viz:
Elizabeth Anderson Gibbons
Elizabeth Anderson#Gibbons
Jacob Henley-Stamp
Jacob#Henley-Stamp
Mikael van der Holdt
Mikael#van der Holdt
Pietor von Tasman von Beringburg
Pietor von Tasman#von Beringburg

Though it still needs outside knowledge added to it to cope with:
David Lloyd George
David#Lloyd George
Re: Splitting up complex names
Post by hinckleyj on Apr 10th, 2016, 8:39pm

on Apr 10th, 2016, 3:00pm, JGHarston wrote:
I've written programs that parse Census records and spit out regular data fields.


Would you be willing to share those here?