hi monks,

i'm trying to write a regex to add a period after any single character in a string.
i.e. "Bob J Smith" becomes "Bob J. Smith", "A Jones" becomes "A. Jones", etc.

i've managed this with: 
sub fullname {
  my (@parts) = @_;
  my $name = join(" ", @parts);
  $name =~ s/^(.) /$1\. /g;
  $name =~ s/ (.) / $1\. /g;
  $name =~ s/ (.)$/ $1\./g;
  return($name);
} # end-sub

[download]
but was trying to get it down to one line. can anyone tell me why this is not working: 
  $name =~ s/(^| )(.)( |$)/$1$2\.$3/g;

[download]
"A A Jones" comes out as "A. A Jones" rather than "A. A. Jones".

cheers,
rsiedl

In reply to simpler regex by rsiedl

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.