Assuming the output you want is:
Lawrence, Jerry A.
Wallace, Bob W.
Anthony, Ronald
Nelson, Dwight R.
Jamison, Jeff S.
Favors, Eric S.
Williams, Herb C.
Carter, Shaun

[download]


This code works
#!/db/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use warnings;

my $filename = $ARGV[0];


open FILE, $filename or die $!;

my $i = 0;
while(<FILE>)
{
        if($i == 0)
        {
                $i++;
                next;
        }
        chomp;
        if (/\"(.*?), (.*?)[" ]((.*?)\")?/)
        {
                my $last = $1;
                my $first = $2;
                my $mi  = $4;
                if(defined $mi)
                {
                        print "$last, $first $mi\n";
                }
                else
                {
                        print "$last, $first\n";
                }
        }

}

close FILE;

[download]

In reply to Re^3: Matching part of a line and saving it into a variable by fidesachates
in thread Matching part of a line and saving it into a variable by mistamutt

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