IDI Software Component Library
© 1996 Information Disciplines, Inc., Chicago

EName conversion (BASIC function)

Author:

Conrad Weisert, Information Disciplines, Inc., Chicago

Purpose:

• To support a standard internal representation for the names of people that:
  • is economical to store in a data base or a table
  • is easy to enter in an input form or dialog
  • does not depend on a fixed number or maximum length of subfields
  • collates in the expected (telephone directory) sequence
  That representation is a 32-byte string consisting of:
  • The surname (may contain any punctuation except comma)
  • a separating comma
  • given names with any embedded punctuation
  Examples:

              Bush,George Herbert Walker
              De Gaulle,Chuck
              Quayle,J. Danforth
              Cher,  

• To convert from that standard internal representation to the commonly accepted external representation in English, e.g.:

              George Herbert Walker Bush
              Chuck De Gaulle
              J. Danforth Quayle
              Cher 

Usage:

. . Ename$(Iname$) . . in an expression,
where Iname$ is a string expression containing a person's name in the standard internal representation described above. (Although IDI's standard calls for a 32-character fixed-length string, this function will work for any input string length.)

The returned value is the name converted to external English representation, in a string of exactly the right length (no leading or trailing blanks).

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Last modified 22 November, 1999