Hi all, I have the following regx to filter out surnames such as Joe Bloggs, Joe De Blogg and Joe Bloggs-Night. 

use strict;

if ($reporter !~ m/(\w+)\s*(.*)/) {
    
  die "Name should be in wrong format";
    
  } else {
    
    $first = $1;
    $last  = $2;
    
    #remove leading/trailing whitespace
    foreach ($first,$last) {
      s/^\s+//;
      s/\s+$//;
    }
    
    if ($first !~ m/[A-Za-z]/) {
      die "First name should only contain letters!";
    }
    
    if ($last =~ m/\d/g) {
      die "Surname should only contain letters, hyphens and apostrophe
+s!";
    }
    elsif ($last =~ m/([A-Za-z\'\-]+)/) {
      $surname = $1;
    }
    elsif ($last =~ m/(\w+)\s*(\w+)/) {
      $surname = join(' ', $1, $3);
    }
    else {
      die "Wrong format in surname!";
    }

[download]
The problem with the above is that for names like Joe de Bloggs, I get "J De" returned and not "J De Bloggs". A little help here? Many thanks in advance. Stacy.

In reply to running riot with an regx on surnames. by maderman

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