in reply to regex help

No need for a regex. Just create a hash where the keys are your full authors collapsed and your values are the full authors complete name. Then, just do lookups in your hash. If you find something, great! If you don't, oh well.

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

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Re^2: regex help
by rsiedl (Friar) on Dec 09, 2004 at 15:11 UTC
    Hey Dragonchild,
    What do you mean by "full authors collapsed"?

    Update: Think I have understood. You mean collapse the full author names to the abrev. like Smith, James -> Smith J?
[reply]
      Exactly. Instead of making things hard for yourself, break the problem down to its component parts and solve it the easy way. :-)

      Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
      Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
      Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
      Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

[reply]
        but that wont be able to deal with authors who have the same initials will it?
        i.e.
        # Smith, Jack
$hash{'Smith J'} = "Smith, Jack";
# Smith, John
$hash{'Smith J'} = "Smith, John";

        [download]
        Jack gets lost...
[reply]
[d/l]

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