R help - Nov 2011 - match first consecutive list of capitalized words in string

Dear R-Helpers,

this is my first post ever to a mailing list, so please feel free to point out
any missunderstandings on my side regarding the conventions of this mailing
list.

My problem:

Assuming the following character vector is given:

names <- c("filia Maria", "vidua Joh Dirck Kleve (oo
02.02.1732)", "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde j.u.Doktor
referendarius sereniss Judex et gograven Rheinensis")

Is there a regular expression matching the first consecutive list of capitalized
words in a single characterstring ("Maria", "Joh Dirck
Kleve", "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde")?
This expression would very reliably seperate the person names from the
additional information in my historic church register transcription.

Thank you very much for your effort,

Jonas

----------
This mail has been sent through the MPI for Demographic ...{{dropped:10}}

Tena koe Jonas

Something like the following may help, although you should probably read the
help on regexpr regarding locales.

Names <- c("filia Maria", "vidua Joh Dirck Kleve (oo
02.02.1732)", "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde j.u.Doktor
referendarius sereniss Judex et gograven Rheinensis")
Names1 <- sub('^[0-9a-z]* ', '', Names)
Names1
ttReg <- regexpr(' [^A-Z]', Names1)
ifelse (ttReg>0, substring(Names1, 1, regexpr(' [^A-Z]', Names1)-1),
Names1)

Incidentally, it is not good practice to call your objects 'names' since
that is a function in R.

HTH ....

Peter Alspach
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
> project.org] On Behalf Of Richter-Dumke, Jonas
> Sent: Wednesday, 9 November 2011 1:49 a.m.
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] match first consecutive list of capitalized words in
> string
> 
> Dear R-Helpers,
> 
> this is my first post ever to a mailing list, so please feel free to
> point out any missunderstandings on my side regarding the conventions
> of this mailing list.
> 
> My problem:
> 
> Assuming the following character vector is given:
> 
> names <- c("filia Maria", "vidua Joh Dirck Kleve (oo
02.02.1732)",
> "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde j.u.Doktor referendarius sereniss
> Judex et gograven Rheinensis")
> 
> Is there a regular expression matching the first consecutive list of
> capitalized words in a single characterstring ("Maria", "Joh
Dirck
> Kleve", "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde")?
> This expression would very reliably seperate the person names from the
> additional information in my historic church register transcription.
> 
> Thank you very much for your effort,
> 
> Jonas
> 
> ----------
> This mail has been sent through the MPI for Demographic
> ...{{dropped:10}}
> 
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On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Richter-Dumke, Jonas
<Richter at demogr.mpg.de> wrote:
> Dear R-Helpers,
>
> this is my first post ever to a mailing list, so please feel free to point
out any missunderstandings on my side regarding the conventions of this mailing
list.
>
> My problem:
>
> Assuming the following character vector is given:
>
> names <- c("filia Maria", "vidua Joh Dirck Kleve (oo
02.02.1732)", "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde j.u.Doktor
referendarius sereniss Judex et gograven Rheinensis")
>
> Is there a regular expression matching the first consecutive list of
capitalized words in a single characterstring ("Maria", "Joh
Dirck Kleve", "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde")?
> This expression would very reliably seperate the person names from the
additional information in my historic church register transcription.
>
Try this. It matches a word boundary followed by zero or more of the
parenthesized expression.  That expression is an upper case letter
followed by zero or more lower case letters followed by one or more
spaces.  Finally we match the last word which consists of an upper
case letter followed by zero or more lower case letters and a word
boundary.  Note that it assumes R 2.14.0 or later:
> re <- "\\b([[:upper:]][[:lower:]]*
+)*[[:upper:]][[:lower:]]*\\b"
> regmatches(names, regexpr(re, names))
[1] "Maria"                             "Joh Dirck Kleve"
[3] "Bernardus Engelb Franciscus Linde"

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