Regular Expression Help

[Matthew Seaman]

Drew Tomlinson wrote:
> I'm attempting to take an ldiff file and flip first/last name order.  
> However I can not figure out how to match hyphenated last names.  In 
> vim, my current search/replace string is:
> 
> %s/cn=\(\w\+\-*\) \(\w\+\),/cn=\2 \1,/gc
> 
> This will match:
> 
> cn=Smith Joe,
> 
> and replace it with:
> 
> cn=Joe Smith,
> 
> But it will not match:
> 
> cn=Smith-Brown Joe,
> 
> nor replace it with:
> 
> cn=Joe Smith-Brown,
> 
> I've tried various incantations of escaping and quantifying yet I can 
> not figure out how to do what I want.

Well, assuming that none of the surnames contain ',' and that the first ' '
(space) is always the delimiter between the surname and that anything else
is forenames ... 

% cat foo.txt 
cn=Smith Joe,
cn=Smith-Brown Joe,
% perl -p -e 's/cn=([^ ,]+) ([^,]+),/cn=$2 $1,/' < foo.txt 
cn=Joe Smith,
cn=Joe Smith-Brown,

ie. you need a s/// command that understands negated character classes.  I
think sed(1) and vi(1) will do that, but I haven't time to look up the precise
syntax.  Perl, of course, just does the job for me.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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