Parse Initials

Question

RegEx questions here... From a listing of names, I'm trying to parse out all instances where an initial is used, for example:

John T. Smith             =       John Smith

J. Thomas Smith        =       Thomas Smith

John Smith                 =       John Smith

John Thomas Smith   =      John Thomas Smith

Thank you!

Paul

Emil_Kos · Accepted Answer

Hi @CPAul,

Probably you can do it in a more elegant way but this should work for you.

What I am doing here is looking for one letter with a dot after it. I am removing those with the data.

The output:

echuong1 · Accepted Answer

This is easily achievable with regex. In the expression, I am looking for an instance of a letter followed by a period. I am replacing it with nothing, thereby removing it.

I added a data cleansing to remove any leading and trailing spaces, should the initial be at the beginning or end. I also removed duplicate whitespace, for instances of the initial in the middle.