Re: Extract firstname and lastname from variable

The problem with your regexes is that you use the start of string anchor ^ in the middle of the string where it can't possibly match. In fact split is likely to be a better tool for this exercise. Consider:

use strict;
use warnings;

for my $name (qw'JoeZZZJones JoeZZZJosephZZZJones Bobbie') {
    my @parts = split 'ZZZ', $name;

    print "Name: $name\n";    
    print "Name part $_: $parts[$_ - 1]\n" for 1 .. @parts;
    print "\n";
}
[download]

Prints:

Name: JoeZZZJones
Name part 1: Joe
Name part 2: Jones

Name: JoeZZZJosephZZZJones
Name part 1: Joe
Name part 2: Joseph
Name part 3: Jones

Name: Bobbie
Name part 1: Bobbie
[download]

True laziness is hard work

Comment on Re: Extract firstname and lastname from variable Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Extract firstname and lastname from variable by colwellj (Monk) on Mar 01, 2010 at 02:41 UTC
split also has the advantage that if you hit someone with a middle name you'll get three items in your array.	[reply]
Re^2: Extract firstname and lastname from variable by llancet (Friar) on Mar 01, 2010 at 03:04 UTC
This one absolutely good: `/^([A-Z][a-z]+)([A-Z]+)?([A-Z][a-z]+)?$/ # stored in $1, $2, $3` [download] it works with: `FooBBBBar FooBar Foo` [download]	[reply] [d/l] [select]