Initials of a name Post: 302590154

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Initials of a name Post 302590154 by agama on Saturday 14th of January 2012 11:23:18 AM

01-14-2012

Registered User

It would be nice to know what context you are trying to do this in. As has been suggested, if you have a file of first and last names, just run a sed across the file. However, if you have a string, or two tokens, as a part of a loop in a programme, then the answer will be different. As an example, if you are working in ksh or bash this is much more efficient than running sed for each individual string:

Code:

full_name="Eric Clapton"
initials="${full_name//[a-z]/}"
echo "$full_name -> $initials"

If you need E.C. or E. C. you can do something like this:

Code:

echo "${initials/ /.}."
echo "${initials/ /. }."

---------- Post updated at 11:23 ---------- Previous update was at 11:16 ----------

Crossed posts with you...

Again, if you're using a Ksh like shell language, then you could just echo out the first characters like this:

Code:

full_name="Eric Clapton"
last="${full_name#* }"
echo  "${full_name:0:1} ${last:0:1}"

agama

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echo

echo(1B)					     SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands						  echo(1B)

NAME

       echo - echo arguments to standard output

SYNOPSIS

       /usr/ucb/echo [-n] [argument]

DESCRIPTION

       echo writes its arguments, separated by BLANKs and terminated by a NEWLINE, to the standard output.

       echo  is useful for producing diagnostics in command files and for sending known data into a pipe, and for displaying the contents of envi-
       ronment variables.

       For example, you can use echo to determine how many subdirectories below the root directory (/) is your current directory, as follows:

	   o	  echo your current-working-directory's full pathname

	   o	  pipe the output through tr to translate the path's embedded slash-characters into space-characters

	   o	  pipe that output through wc -w for a count of the names in your path.

		    example% /usr/bin/echo "echo $PWD | tr '/' ' ' | wc -w"

       See tr(1) and wc(1) for their functionality.

       The shells csh(1), ksh(1), and sh(1), each have an echo built-in command, which, by default, will have precedence, and will be  invoked	if
       the  user  calls  echo without a full pathname. /usr/ucb/echo and csh's echo() have an -n option, but do not understand back-slashed escape
       characters. sh's echo(), ksh's echo(), and /usr/bin/echo, on the other hand, understand the  black-slashed  escape  characters,	and  ksh's
       echo() also understands a as the audible bell character; however, these commands do not have an -n option.

OPTIONS

       -n    Do not add the NEWLINE to the output.

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Availability		     |SUNWscpu			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       csh(1), echo(1), ksh(1), sh(1), tr(1), wc(1), attributes(5)

NOTES

       The -n option is a transition aid for BSD applications, and may not be supported in future  releases.

SunOS 5.11							    3 Aug 1994								  echo(1B)

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