Salutations

[raouleduke]

I have this script here that parses a NAME and comes out with the correct way to display the name and salutation.

$nameStr = $row1["CUSTOMERNAME"];

if(strpos($nameStr, ',')) 
{ 
	list($firstPart,$secondPart)=explode(',', $nameStr);
	$customername2 = "$secondPart  $firstPart"; 

}else{ 

	// Get only the first name, and leave the rest. 
	$customername2 = $row1["CUSTOMERNAME"]; 
} 


$name = $row1["CUSTOMERNAME"]; 
if(strpos($name, ',')) 
{ 
	// We'll extract just the first name 
	$names = explode(",", $name); 
	// And remove trailing spaces 
	$name = trim($names[1]); 
} 

if(strpos($name, ' ')) 
{ 
	// Get only the first name, and leave the rest. 
	$name = substr($name, 0, strpos($name, ' ')); 
} 

Here are some of the variables that go into that parsing script.

SOUTH SIDE ELECTRIC INC
SPALDING, DAVID ANDREW
STIEF, BURDETTE C
STIER TRANSPORTATION SERVICES
VALLEY PLUMBING CO
ALAN MALZ
ALVIRA HAUS
ANDREW WEINANDT
ANGELA HENNEN
ANTHONY KRAUTKREMER
ANTHONY SCHMIDT
BARBARA MINAR

My problem comes in when there is a business like "SOUTH SIDE ELECTRIC INC", the salutation comes up with Dear INC, when it should read Dear SOUTH SIDE ELECTRIC INC, . The names work fine "ALAN MALZ" comes up with Dear ALAN, . and "STIEF, BURDETTE C" comes up with Dear BURDETTE, .

I don't even know if this is possible or not, I have no other identifiers in there for Business's, so I can't decifer it that way. Let me know if you have any thoughts, thanks in advance.

[Piranha]

What you try to do is more or less impossible. The computer have no way to know if it is a company or a person in a specific row. Maybe you can search for "inc", "co" and other things that you consider being a company and not a person. But it will still not catch every company. Another way is to do a table with every possible name that persons may have, but that is almost impossible as well. In addition there may be company names that looks like person names, and that a human can't decide on either.

You don't want to hear this, but the best thing is probably to rethink the whole database design. I would probably make one table for persons names with one column with firstname and one with lastname. Another table would handle company names. An easier way, but that requires more job in the future, is to simply have a variable that tells if it is a company or a person.

And for gods sake, don't let people insert data however they want to. Either it is "firstname lastname" and it should be that in ALL rows. Or it is "lastname, firstname" and that should be the case in ALL rows. Having it as you have it now will only cause trouble, as you have already noticed.

[scrupul0us]

well... if you format you names to be last, first THEN you can check for that comma during parse.. otherwise tell it just to use the whole name... of course, you cant have any commas in the business name then either