Regular Expression Help (Searching name patterns)

[Circuit_Girl]

I am learning UNIX and the use of Regex.
I need to write a regular expression that recognizes the following name patterns:

Mr. John Public
Ms. Ida Psuedonym
Mister Baggins, Bilbo
Ms Ham, Virginia

* Honorifics may be missing (mr., ms., Mister)
* Dot may be missing
* Names may be (last name, first name or first name, last name)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

[ghostdog74]

you have been learning since 2009, when you have already touched things like Perl, awk, *nix. so what have you tried and got so far? Also, you are trying to match names, but is the data you provided only that ? or there are other information?

[Sidewinder]

With regular expressions the devil is in the details. I had help using the freebie RegexBuilder which works well with PerlScript and VBScript. Probably works well with others as well.

Code: [Select]

\b[A-Z]+[a-z\.]{1,}\s[A-Z]+[A-Za-z,\s\.\-']{1,}[A-Z]+[A-Za-z,\s\.\-']{1,}\b

This should also pick up names that are hyphenated, include an apostrophe, or have a letter initial for a first name. All RegEx engines are not exactly the same so results may vary.

Good luck. 

[Fields]

I am learning UNIX and the use of Regex.
I need to write a regular expression that recognizes the following name patterns:

C:test>Display   reg.txt

Mr. John Public
Ms. Ida Psuedonym
Mister Baggins, Bilbo
Ms Ham, Virginia

C:test>grep Ida  reg.txt
Ms. Ida Psuedonym

C:test>findstr Ida  reg.txt
Ms. Ida Psuedonym

C:test>grep Bilbo  reg.txt
Mister Baggins, Bilbo

C:test>findstr Bilbo  reg.txt
Mister Baggins, Bilbo

C:test>
_______________________________

grep is a command line text search utility originally written for Unix. The name is taken from the first letters in global / regular expression / print, a series of instructions in text editors.  The grep command searches files or standard input globally for lines matching a given regular expression, and prints them to the programs standard output.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep

[ghostdog74]

@fields, do you even know what's happening?

[ghostdog74]

Code: [Select]

\b[A-Z]+[a-z\.]{1,}\s[A-Z]+[A-Za-z,\s\.\-']{1,}[A-Z]+[A-Za-z,\s\.\-']{1,}\b


but does it pick up words that are capitalized, but not names or honorifics? I don't think OP provided comprehensive enough data for us to help further.

[ghostdog74]

I am learning UNIX and the use of Regex.
I need to write a regular expression that recognizes the following name patterns:

Mr. John Public
Ms. Ida Psuedonym
Mister Baggins, Bilbo
Ms Ham, Virginia

* Honorifics may be missing (mr., ms., Mister)
* Dot may be missing
* Names may be (last name, first name or first name, last name)

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

here's an example  using grep (GNU)

Code: [Select]

$ more file
Blah Blah Text Text Mr. John Public what a troll....
 blab blah Ms. Ida Psuedonym ABC def
die die die Mister Baggins, Bilbo end end end
go eat **** mrs Ham, Virginia you b****
honorfics missing Peter Jackson bloody Mary.
Here's the lady Miss Jennifer-Beals welcome her please.
Mr Bill Richard is a troll

$  grep -Pio "([Mm][rs][s]*\.*|Mister|Miss)\s+\w+[- \t,]*\w+[ \t]*" file
Mr. John Public
Ms. Ida Psuedonym
Mister Baggins, Bilbo
mrs Ham, Virginia
Miss Jennifer-Beals
Mr Bill Richard


it doesn't take care of missing honorifics, since you wont' have a specific way to know when its a name of when its just a capitalized word (depends very much on your data).

[Sidewinder]

I promised myself I would not post behind our resident troll, but feel it would be unfair to the OP since I posted before he got involved with this thread. The OP wins out, if she ever returns.

I admit I swiped GD's pattern for the honorifics, but I get different results when using GREP and VBScript. I chose not to use the \w notation to specifically exclude numbers.

Pattern:

Code: [Select]

\b([M][rs][s]?\.?|Mister|Miss)\s[A-Z']{1,3}[a-z',]{1,}(\s|\-)([A-Z']{1,3}[a-z]{1,})\b

The GREP resulted with this list:

Mr. John Public
Ms. Ida Psuedonym
Mister Baggins, Bilbo
mrs Ham, Virginia
Miss Jennifer-Beals
Mr Bill Richard

The VBScript resulted with this list:

Mr. John Public
Ms. Ida Psuedonym
Mister Baggins, Bilbo
Miss Jennifer-Beals
Mr Bill Richard

Note that mrs Ham, Virginia is missing from the VBScript results. This is correct as mrs is not capitalized. Be aware of different engines producing different results.

As GD mentioned, only the honorifics specifically mentioned were incorporated into the match pattern.

 

[BC_Programmer]

I promised myself I would not post behind our resident troll, but feel it would be unfair to the OP since I posted before he got involved with this thread. The OP wins out, if she ever returns.

One problem though, is that IMO opinion the OP <IS> our resident troll. He does it a lot, and it wastes everybody's time. Problem is it's difficult to tell.

[Fields]

One problem though, is that IMO opinion the OP <IS> Fields. He does it a lot, and it wastes everybodys time. Problem is its difficult to tell.

Hey Boy (BCP) you are confused. Fields and the OP are not the same person. 

Can BCP say Paranoid to the Max.  Is BCP a Shutin with unlimited imagination?

The mental breakdown of BCP?

[BC_Programmer]

Wow he's really desperate for Troll food! 

[Fields]

Fields, do you even know whats happening?

I know we should post sample output when we post code.  The Ghost is unable to learn that.

But The Ghost is right:  I do not see any need to corrupt the useful grep command and use grep in such a strange manner.  

_______________________________

Twenty years old and still in  the eight grade?

[BC_Programmer]

haha... as amusing as he was before, it's even funnier when nobody feeds him what he wants!

[ghostdog74]

Note that mrs Ham, Virginia is missing from the VBScript results. This is correct as mrs is not capitalized. Be aware of different engines producing different results.

actually its not really the engine, but its because i put case insensitivity [Mm] as well as -i option for grep. That's why "mrs" is captured as well. In fact [Mm] could be just M or m since -i is used.

[Sidewinder]

actually its not really the engine, but its because i put case insensitivity [Mm] as well as -i option for grep. That's why "mrs" is captured as well. In fact [Mm] could be just M or m since -i is used.

I'm not  understanding the reasoning of building a regex pattern that specifically masks upper case letters (Mister, Miss, M) and then directing the regex engine to run in case insensitive mode. VBScript has such a feature also (different syntax) but in all my experience, I have never seen anyone use it....not once. Oh well, live and learn.

It's all academic anyway. Nifty concept, if Fields and Circuit_Girl  turn out to be the same person,  he can ask and answer his own questions. Reminds me of the Mother and Norman relationship.