Split a person name at a comma and capitalize each name component

Question

I have a name like this :

"DOE D, John"

and a name like this:

"DOE, Jane"

in the form of a string

I need to convert it to this:

"John D Doe"

and

"Jane Doe"

I have this so far:

name = "DOE, John"
name_list = []

comma = ","

for letter in name:
    name_list.append(letter)

index_comma = name_list.index(",")
last_name = name_list[:index_comma]
first_name = name_list[index_comma:]
print('The primary list is: ',name_list)
print("First half of list is ",first_name)
print("Second half of list is ",last_name)
new_name_list = first_name + last_name
for letter in new_name_list:
    if letter == comma:
        new_name_list.pop()
print(''.join(new_name_list))

but it returns this:

, JohnDO

How do I go about doing this in a clean and Pythonic way?

Answer 1

You can use the following method:

>>> " ".join(reversed(" ".join("DOE D, John".split(",")).split())).title()
'John D Doe'

>>> " ".join(reversed(" ".join("DOE, Jane".split(",")).split())).title()
'Jane Doe'

• .split(",") splits the left and right sides of the comma
• The inner " ".join re-combines the components using spaces as separators
• .split() splits all words
• reversed reverses the word list
• The outer " ".join re-combines the reversed word list
• .title() capitalizes the first letter of each word

Answer 2

how about

def convert_name_format(name):
    # split into parts
    parts = name.split(", ")
    first_part, first_name = parts
    first_parts = first_part.split(" ")
    # check for initial
    if len(first_parts) == 2:
        last_name, initial = first_parts
        if len(initial) > 1:
            new_format = f"{initial} {first_name} {last_name}"
        else:
            new_format = f"{first_name} {initial} {last_name}"
    else:
        new_format = f"{first_name} {first_part}"

    return new_format.title()

print(convert_name_format("DOE D, John"))
# John D Doe
print(convert_name_format("DOE, John"))
# John Doe
print(convert_name_format("DOE, John D"))
# John D Doe
print(convert_name_format("DOE John, D"))
# John D Doe