Stripping Name

raouleduke

I have this name in a database and it looks like this:

SHARFF,CAROLE J

How do I select everthing after the comma for the Dear CAROLE J?

And can I switch them so it shows correclty like this:

CAROLE J SHARFF

nemik

hmmm that is one of the reasons i keep first name, middle initial, and last name each as its own column in a mysql table. so i can later format them however.

preg_replace() i beleive can switch out that comma with a space, but as for switching the last and first name around or just getting the first name...not too sure.

raouleduke

It comes to me that way, will that function work for just stripping out the first name. Like everything after the comma.

SHARFF,CAROLE J to CAROLE J

Matt_Kindig

Script assumes you have a $nameStr variable for the name, in the form, SHARFF,CAROLE J

<?php
list($firstPart,$secondPart)=explode(',', $nameStr);

//results in $firstPart="SHARFF", $secondPart="CAROLE J"

echo "Dear $secondPart";  //returns Dear CAROLE J

echo "$firstPart $secondPart"; //returns CAROLE J SHARFF

?>

raouleduke

That worked great, thank you so much.

nemik

then if possible perhaps create a script to loop through the database and put each part into its own column to avoid doing another explode() combo when doing different formatting.