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Topic: Splitting up complex names (Read 914 times) |
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hinckleyj
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Splitting up complex names
« Thread started on: Apr 3rd, 2016, 06:11am » |
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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
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Ian Kings
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Re: Splitting up complex names
« Reply #1 on: Apr 3rd, 2016, 10:20am » |
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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
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hinckleyj
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Re: Splitting up complex names
« Reply #2 on: Apr 3rd, 2016, 8:18pm » |
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Hi Ian,
Thank you.
That's worked great!
Appreciate your help.
Regards,
John.
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JGHarston
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Re: Splitting up complex names
« Reply #3 on: Apr 10th, 2016, 3:00pm » |
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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.
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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
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hinckleyj
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Re: Splitting up complex names
« Reply #4 on: Apr 10th, 2016, 8:39pm » |
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on Apr 10th, 2016, 3:00pm, JGHarston wrote:I've written programs that parse Census records and spit out regular data fields.
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Would you be willing to share those here?
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