Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

I'm devastatingly miserable at complex regular expressions, but I would love a nudge in the right direction. I'm trying to parse some authors' names by removing initials, when the full names are used later. I realize there probably won't be a "perfect" solution that catches all exceptions, but I'm looking for a "good enough" solution.

Example input

C S Clive Staples Lewis  T H Terence Hanbury White  R Salvatore  George R R Martin  J R R John Ronald Reuel Tolkien  J K Rowling  

Ideal output

Clive Staples Lewis  Terence Hanbury White  R Salvatore  George R R Martin  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien  J K Rowling  

Something along the lines of this: $str = preg_replace('#(?:\s+\S{1,2})+\s+#',' ',$str); though this is obviously missing the first instance of the single character, but changing that would remove the r in r salvatore and the j k in j k rowling.

Thank you for any insight.

Answer by anubhava for Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

You can use it like this:

$str = 'C S Clive Staples Lewis';      $str = preg_replace('#^([A-Z]\s)+(?=([A-Z]+\s+){2,})#i','',$str);   echo $str; // Clive Staples Lewis    $str = 'J K Rowling';      $str = preg_replace('#^([A-Z]\s)+(?=([A-Z]+\s+){2,})#i','',$str);   echo $str; // J K Rowling  

Answer by Casimir et Hippolyte for Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

You can use this:

$result = preg_replace('~^(?:[A-Z]\h){2,}~m', '', $str);   

If you want to put exceptions you can do that:

$str = <<  J \h K \h      Rowling                    | J \h F \h      Kennedy                    | C \h P \h E \h Bach      )    )      # pattern      ^(?!\g)    (?:[A-Z]\h){2,}  ~xm  LOD;    $result = preg_replace($pattern, '', $str);  

Answer by SmokeyPHP for Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

This seems to do what you're after:

var t = [  'C S Clive Staples Lewis'  ,'T H Terence Hanbury White'  ,'R Salvatore'  ,'George R R Martin'  ,'J R R John Ronald Reuel Tolkien'  ,'J K Rowling'  ];  for(var i=0,c=t.length;i

Do note, however, that this method is limited to 3 initials (though I can't see you ever having more than that!)

On the plus side, this is checking that initials are matched up to a name starting with that letter before removing them

If you need PHP:

$t = array(  'C S Clive Staples Lewis'  ,'T H Terence Hanbury White'  ,'R Salvatore'  ,'George R R Martin'  ,'J R R John Ronald Reuel Tolkien'  ,'J K Rowling'  );  for($i=0,$c=count($t);$i<$c;$i++)  {      $newStr = preg_replace('/^([A-Z]) ([A-Z])((?: [A-Z])?) (\1\w+ \2\w+( \3\w+)?.+)$/','$4',$t[$i]);      var_dump($newStr);  }  

Answer by gpmurthy for Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

Consider the following Regex...

(?(^(\w\s)+\w{2,}(\s\w{2,}){1,})^(\w\s)+)

Answer by edi_allen for Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

Even though you are using PHP you did not specify a language. So this is a sample in Perl.

use strict;  use warnings;    open my $data_fh, '<', 'Data1.txt'       or die "Can't open Data1.txt $!";    while (my $line = <$data_fh>) {      $line =~ s/\b([A-Z])\b (?=.*?\b\1[A-Z]+\b)//xig; # Match an initial only if there is a word starting with that initial later in the string.      $line =~ s/^\s*|\s*$//g; #strip leading or trailing space.      print "$line\n";  }    #OUTPUT  Clive Staples Lewis  Terence Hanbury White  R Salvatore  George R R Martin  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien  J K Rowling  

Answer by Teneff for Regular Expression to remove single characters from the beginning of string, only if there are 2 or more

You can use the following regular expression:

^(?:([A-Z])(?=.*?\1[a-z]+)\s)+  

It will match:

^ // from the beginning of the string  (?:  // non-capturing group      ([A-Z]) // cature uppercase string      (?=.*?\1[a-z]+) // positive lookahead for the letter captured above followed by multiple lowercase characters      \s // followed by a space  )+ // multiple times  

php live regex example

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