Comments on: Formatting Names Using Ruby

By: Tim Knight

Tim Knight — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 13:54:46 +0000

That’s a great link, thank you for sharing. I always find it obnoxious when a system doesn’t properly take an apostrophe. As for your example of “van Campen” I have to say “it depends”. If the system most understand the difference between the first name and last name splitting the name programmatically wouldn’t be my approach. If I was going to do something I would still split it into an array. Move the first one out into the first name and then in what was remaining check to see if the next item in the array was “van” and if so include it with the last item in the array as the last name. I’m sure there is a better way, but that’s my initial thought.

By: jDeppen

jDeppen — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 08:22:17 +0000

And what about this name “Jessica van Campen” where “van Campen” is the last name?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-21-2916826860_x.htm

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:31:00 +0000

Thanks Dominic, I’m glad it helped.

By: Dominic

Dominic — Fri, 22 May 2009 01:44:59 +0000

Nobody leaves a comment, but you help coders out there. I was thinking regular expression, find the space. No! it’s split! duh – Thanks.