🚀 go-pugleaf

OK. This is going to be hard to explain, but here it goes.

I need to write an application or applet to read a file and parse it
into fields. Easy enough. For the most part it is. The only problem is
that a name field can be a number of different ways.

Example:

John Q. Doe
J. Quincy Doe
J. Q. Doe
Mr. John Q. Doe
Dr. J. Q. Doe

Get the picture. We cannot ask the provider of the data file to conform
to a particular format, and there are many providers hence many formats.

What I was hoping for is something like encoding according to a pattern.
The patterns could then be stored in a properties type file. Each
provider would have their own property file. The same Java engine would
then be able to process the name.

Example of algorithm:

String                Pattern        Encode                Result
--------------
J. Quincy Doe    A. B C        C    B    A           Doe    Quincy    J
    A = J (No . because the . is part of the pattern)
    B = Quincy
    C = Doe

John Q. Doe    A B. C         C, A                    Doe, John
    A = John
    B = Q (no .)
    C = Doe

Get the picture?

Any help would be great! If you need a future explanation, let me know.

Mike
mikeangelo@usa.net