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(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   echo(1)

NAME

       echo - echo (print) arguments

SYNOPSIS

       [arg] ...

DESCRIPTION

       writes  its  arguments  separated by blanks and terminated by a new-line on the standard output.  It also understands C-like escape conven-
       tions; beware of conflicts with the shell's use of

	      write an alert character
	      backspace
	      print line without appending a new-line
	      form-feed
	      new-line
	      carriage return
	      tab
	      vertical tab
	      backslash
	      the 8-bit character whose
			ASCII code is the 1-, 2-, 3- or 4-digit octal number n, whose first character must be a zero.
	      write an 8-bit value that is the zero-, one-, two- or three-digit octal number
			num

       is useful for producing diagnostics in command files and for sending known data into a pipe.

   Notes
       Berkeley differs from this implementation.  The former does not implement the backslash escapes.  However, the semantics of the escape  can
       be obtained by using the option.  The echo command implemented as a built-in function of follows the Berkeley semantics (see csh(1)).

EXTERNAL INFLUENCES

   Environment Variables
       determines the interpretation of arg as single and/or multi-byte characters.

       If is not specified in the environment or is set to the empty string, the value of is used as a default for each unspecified or empty vari-
       able.  If is not specified or is set to the empty string, a default of "C" (see lang(5)) is used instead  of  If  any  internationalization
       variable contains an invalid setting, behaves as if all internationalization variables are set to "C".  See environ(5).

   International Code Set Support
       Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported.

AUTHOR

       was developed by OSF and HP.

SEE ALSO

       sh(1).

BUGS

       No characters are printed after the first This is not normally a problem.

STANDARDS CONFORMANCE

																	   echo(1)

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