Hello Luc!
On Monday, March 24, 2003 at 6:28:33 PM you wrote:
> Is there a work around and still using the first name of the
> recipient?
I doubt it. See below.
> Maybe a regex that has some kind of condition:
> if A B = [EMAIL PROTECTED], use A, otherwise use B
The problem lies in knowing what counts as a surname and what as a
first name. It is (relatively) easy for humans to recognize which is
which - as long as the underlying rule is known.
For most (all?) indo-european languages the pattern is (as indicated
by the terms "First ... Last name" or "Vorname ... Nachname" in
English and German respectively) is:
"Given Name" first then "Family Name"
But that is *not* universal. In Asian languages it goes the other way
round, some languages don't even have given names.
What we do is recognize the correct name from context and lexical
knowledge ("Joe" is usually a first name, "Smith" isn't). Sometimes
even this doesn't work: G�tz Friedrich is a perfectly normal name in
Germany, as is Friedrich G�tz. You can't tell which is which.
If someone really provides a macro or RegEx, in fact any kind of
algorithm, making the required decision at least 95% correct, he will
be a rich man. I venture to say that you can't bring up even a
complicated RegEx with lexical look-up which will be correct
considerably more than 50% (which would be random as long as the
number of instances of reversed order names is as high as the correct
order *and* we are talking addresses without middle name/initial).
--
Dierk Haasis
The Bat 1.63 Beta/7 on Windows XP 5.1 2600Service Pack 1
My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose,
but queerer than we *can* suppose. (J.B.S. Haldane)
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