regular expression issue

data67 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hey all, I have been trying to come up with a regular expression that can detect a name in a flat-file database. The flatfile has some info. lets say for example i got a flat-file for a Dentist office and i want to add a new patient to this file if he is not present. simple enough right!
But wait, i got patients that share parts of a name.

Example:
Don Phillie Johnson
Alexander simon
simon DeGauo
simon DeGauo Henderson
Alex Johnson
Alex Johnson Stevens

You see i need to come up with somewhat of a smarter regex that can go do this. Now one thing that i forgot to mention in the scenerio is that the flat-file has different doctors.
so if you had something like the following it is ok:
123!simon DeGauo!rm-200!Dr. Andre
123!simon DeGauo!rm-200!Dr. Banks
Now you see i am gonna have to do a regex that looks at both the patient name (variation sensative) and the doctor.
I know the explanation is not the best but i think you guys can look at the follwing and get a clue also.

$patient = "Alex";
$new_doc = "Kessler";

open (REC, "record.data");
@data = <REC>;
close (REC);

foreach $line (@data) {
        my ($id, $patient, $room, $doc) = split (/!/, $line);
        if (($patient =~ /($new_patient)/i) && ($doc =~ $new_doc)) {
                print "$line\n";
        } else {
                print "NO PATIENT BY THAT NAME\n"; 
}
[download]

Comment on regular expression issue Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: regular expression issue by DamnDirtyApe (Curate) on Aug 02, 2002 at 22:14 UTC
Two clarifications would be helpful: are `simon DeGauo' and `simon DeGauo Henderson' two different people, or the same person with their name presented two different ways in the database? In these two records: 123!simon DeGauo!rm-200!Dr. Andre 123!simon DeGauo!rm-200!Dr. Banks Are we seeing two records for the same person, or two different people with the same name? _______________ DamnDirtyApe Those who know that they are profound strive for clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for obscurity. --Friedrich Nietzsche	[reply]
Re: Re: regular expression issue by data67 (Monk) on Aug 06, 2002 at 16:15 UTC
Ans. to Question 1 These are different people that may share parts of thier names. Ans. to Question 2 what you wrote in the second question is the same patient but with different doctors. I mentioned this senario in my initial question.	[reply]
(shockme) Re: regular expression issue by shockme (Chaplain) on Aug 03, 2002 at 03:46 UTC
Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but (in its most simplistic form) if `$x = "simon DeGauo" # aka current <INPUT> and $y= "simon DeGauo Henderson" # aka previous <INPUT>` [download] how can there be any confusion? If things get any worse, I'll have to ask you to stop helping me.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: (shockme) Re: regular expression issue by data67 (Monk) on Aug 06, 2002 at 16:21 UTC
I think you may have misunderstood the question. what i am after here was to be able to take a name and see if that particular patient is in the file for that doctor. simple enough. But i was trying to come up with a regex that is smarter that the common `m//i;`. JUST TO CLARIFY, IF YOU SEE A NAME IN THIS FILE THAT IS DIFFERENT IN ANY WAY. THEN IT IS GONNA BE TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: regular expression issue by tommyw (Hermit) on Aug 06, 2002 at 16:27 UTC
Do you really want to do regular expression matching? `if ((lc $patient eq lc $new_patient && lc $doc eq lc $new_doc) {` [download] will give you a match only when there is an exact match (which appears to be what you're asking for). Otherwise you're going to have to ask for more information: if the patient's name is Simon, does this match the existing Simons, or is it a new one? With a regexp, it's an existing patient; with equality, a new one. You've got the same problem with the two Simons in your example. -- Tommy Too stupid to live. Too stubborn to die.	[reply] [d/l]