Re: Generate unique initials from a list of names

[TomDLux]

If fitting data onto one line is essential

In your situation, I would look into Soundex and similar name encoding algorithms.

Normally they are used to match up variant spellings of names, but since they convert a name to a code, yet still have a chancee of recognizing the name from the code.

---

Consider multi-line output

Alternatly, you could look into using format and turning the Consumer section into a multi-line component:

Date Range                  Level   Consumers
-------------------------- -------  ----------------------------------
13 Mar 2004 to 23 Mar 2004      7   John Wayne, John Dillinger,  
                                    George W. Bush, Federico Felini, 
                                    Ian Sutherland, Katherine Hepburn,
+ 
                                    Madonna

No messy encodings, no problems figuring out the identities of the people in the Consumers list, only a minor inconvenience learning to use a format.

[EdwardG]

The multi-line approach is probably my most realistic fallback, and I must confess that this has (for me) turned into a bit of an academic exercise, just for fun.

I did briefly consider a soundex encoding (metaphone actually), but I couldn't find a suitable encoding. Text::Soundex gives results like 'E460' and 'L222', and Text::Metaphone gives results that are in some cases worse than my Initials hack -

D:\tmp>cat metaphone.pl
use Text::Metaphone;

print $_,' => ', Metaphone($_),"\n" for map {chomp;$_} <DATA>;

__DATA__
Stephen Thrasher
Steve Trasher

D:\tmp>metaphone.pl
Stephen Thrasher => STFN0RXR
Steve Trasher => STFTRXR

D:\tmp>initials.pl
Stephen Thrasher => StTh
Steve Trasher => StTr

D:\tmp>