I'm trying to take a person's full name, "Firstname Middlename Lastname" and invert it to "Lastname, Firstname Middlename". I'm reading in a file and trying to write out to a sql script.

Here is the data:

Literature|30001f3d|John M. Doe

This is what I'm trying to get: 

INSERT INTO Books Title,FileID,author,authInv)
VALUES ('Literature','30001f3d','John M. Doe','Doe, John M.');

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I'm new to perl so I don't know how to write a script to invert it. I've seen a code before where you take the full name, start the counter at the end, go until you hit a space and reformat the field to add the comma but I just can't make it work. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Here is the code:

print "What is the directory where we'll be working: ";
       $directory = <STDIN>;
       chomp ($directory);
print "What is the file name, with a file extension: ";
       $file = <STDIN>;
       chomp ($file);

$originalfile = "$directory/$file";

open(FIRST, "<$originalfile" ) || die "I cannot open $originalfile. $!
+";
       @contents = <FIRST>;
close(FIRST);

$new = "$directory/SQL-Insert-Titles.sql";
unlink($new);
open(SECOND, ">$new") || die "I cannot open $new. $!";
foreach $line (@contents)
{
       @splitline = split /\|/, $line;
       $title = $splitline[0];
       $file = $splitline[1];
       $author = $splitline[2];
       $authinv = $splitline[3];
       chomp($title);
       chomp($file);
       print SECOND "INSERT INTO Books Title,FileID,author,authInv)
VALUES ('$title','$file','$author','$authinv')\;\n";
}
close(SECOND);

print "\n\tDone.";
|

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Edited 2005-04-08 by Ovid

In reply to Inverting full names by kieps

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