If fitting data onto one line is essential

In your situation, I would look into Soundex and similar name encoding algorithms.

Normally they are used to match up variant spellings of names, but since they convert a name to a code, yet still have a chancee of recognizing the name from the code.

Consider multi-line output

Alternatly, you could look into using format and turning the Consumer section into a multi-line component:

Date Range                  Level   Consumers
-------------------------- -------  ----------------------------------
13 Mar 2004 to 23 Mar 2004      7   John Wayne, John Dillinger,  
                                    George W. Bush, Federico Felini, 
                                    Ian Sutherland, Katherine Hepburn,
+ 
                                    Madonna

[download]

No messy encodings, no problems figuring out the identities of the people in the Consumers list, only a minor inconvenience learning to use a format.

--
TTTATCGGTCGTTATATAGATGTTTGCA

In reply to Re: Generate unique initials from a list of names by TomDLux
in thread Generate unique initials from a list of names by EdwardG

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