> On Jan 15, 2016, at 11:49, Ross Murray <rossmurray.a...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I would like to see a REVERSE function, which returns a new string with > characters in reverse order to the target string. > > I am attempting to remove duplicates after merging many files to create a > very large list of names. Names may or may not have middle names; and/or > initials which may or may not be follows by full stops. I would like to > extract the last names and use those the primary sort key. While feasible > with existing functions, it would seem easiest to - REVERSE the full names; > FIND the first space; RIGHT to extract the last names; and REVERSE those to > their original form.
If I were to face this issue today [I think I've struggled with it in the past and most of the manipulations were manual], I'd save the file as a CSV. I would then in the scripting language of your choice [Rexx or Python would be mine] process each line of the CSV, parsing the name fields and add a new field for last name, writing out a new CSV which could then be opened and sorted. Don't forget John Smith PhD or Sam Adams IV or Jr. — jt - j...@jt-mj.net Hard work pays off in the future. Laziness pays off now. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@openoffice.apache.org
