Hey wise-guys/gals... :-). Kind of a two part question, the first fine-tuning, is-there-a-better-slicker-Perl-idiom. The second is a request for some split/join guidance.

I've got a list of names that I need to "normalize" according to the following rules:

• Uppercase first char of each name, lowercase rest:

  SMITH, JOHN H.  --becomes-->  Smith, John H.
  [download]

• Preferred name in parens, same rule applies:

  Smith, John H. (JOHNNY) --becomes--> Smith, John H. (Johnny)
  [download]

• Words starting with a "*" should be left alone:

  SMITH, JOHN H. (JOHNNY) *CONTRACTOR* --becomes--> Smith, John H. (John
  +ny) *CONTRACTOR*
  [download]

I'm promised (I think) that the items will always be space-separated, although I'm a bit nervous about that one. I think I need to allow for that, just in case. In any event, the following code seems to work if I assume just space delimiters:

#!/usr/bin/perl
                                     
use strict;
use warnings;

my @names = ("Foonman, Joseph S. (Joe)",
             "SMITH, EDWARD",
             "Perl, Paul M. *CONTRACTOR*",
             "Jones, Bobby R.",
             "Ruth, BABE B. *CONTRACTOR*",
             "CLAUSE, SANTINO (SANTA)",
             );

for my $n (@names) {
  print join(" ", map( { if (/^\*/) {
                           $_;
                         }
                         elsif (/^\(/) {
                           "\(".ucfirst(lc(substr($_,1)));
                         }
                         else {
                           ucfirst(lc($_));
                         } 
                       } 
                       split(/ /,$n)))."\n";
}
[download]

Gives me exactly what I want:

Foonman, Joseph S. (Joe)
Smith, Edward
Perl, Paul M. *CONTRACTOR*
Jones, Bobby R.
Ruth, Babe B. *CONTRACTOR*
Clause, Santino (Santa)
[download]

Part of my learning process with Perl has been to always ask "Is there a better way?" Any ideas? I'd be particularly interested in people pointing out any weaknesses with this approach, and if there is a more concise way to do it.

And back to question 2: Of course this code doesn't work for Claus,Santa (no space delimeter). I'd appreciate any suggestions for handling the case if someone surprises me with only a comma delimeter. I tried splitting on / |,/ but of course that eliminates all the commas in the output. I'm having difficulty since if I'm splitting on either a space or a comma, I don't know how to tell which one forced the split so that I can use the appropriate character when I re-join the whole thing. I hope that makes sense.

Cheers,
Ken