in reply to Generate unique initials from a list of names

Would it be useful to use initials with trailing digits, and have a legend at the end of (each page of) the report?

Something like:

Date Range Level Consumers -------------------------- ------- -------------------------- 13 Mar 2004 to 23 Mar 2004 7 AB, AT, DA, MS, RI, RR1, RR2 24 Mar 2004 to 31 Mar 2004 6 AB, DA, RC, RI, RR1, SJ 01 Apr 2004 to 15 May 2004 3 Alan Po, Rohan Ito, Sam Jones 16 May 2004 to 31 Dec 2004 5 AP, PS, RC, RI, SJ --------------------- RR1: Ron Richards RR2: Renee Rotunda
And what happens if you have 2 "John J. Smith"s? Do you append their employee numbers?

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

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Re: Re: Generate unique initials from a list of names
by EdwardG (Vicar) on Mar 12, 2004 at 23:18 UTC

    For this report, it is a given that the names are unique.

    And your idea of using numbers is of course workable, only it seems less elegant than trying for unique initials. As I mentioned in the OP, I considered just using numbers but didn't want the additional list.

    Perhaps unrealistic, but if I just wanted a practical solution I'd probably be using MS Project for resource levelling rather than a perl hack :)