Why do all your own barking when you can get yourself a perfectly good dog? ;)

Lingua::EN::Parse::PersonsName does a pretty good job with this:

#!/usr/bin/perl -wl
use strict;
use Lingua::EN::Parse::PersonsName;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp();

    # Get rid of the stuff we don't need on either end of the string
    my ($fullname) = $_ =~ /^\'\s+(.*?)\'$/;

    my $parser = Lingua::EN::Parse::PersonsName->new($fullname);
    print join(" ",$parser->fname, $parser->mi, $parser->lname);
}

__DATA__
'   Smith, John'
'   Thompson, Frank A'
'   Smith, John A JR'
'   Smith, John A III'
'   Smith, John A (Johnny)'
' Robert E Smith'
'   Fred E.J.K Flintstone III'
[download]

Output:

John  Smith
Frank A Thompson
John A Smith
John A Smith
John A Smith
Robert E Smith
Fred E Flintstone
[download]

(Note that a warning is thrown on the first one when we try to print the middle initial - because there is none.)

Cheers,
Darren :)