Abbriviate Second Word

[Robin_Bigio]

Hi there,

I am trying to shorten names in a table, but taking the second word, and trimming it to 1 character and adding a “.”

Here is the doc

Any ideas about how to do it with a formula?

[Pch]

Hi @Robin_Bigio

I’ve added 2 column to your sample with these formula

Number 1: Format()

Format(
  "{1} {2}.",
  thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ").Nth(1),
  thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ").Nth(2).Left(1)
  )

Number 2: Concatenate()

Concatenate(
  thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ").Nth(1),
  " ",
  thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ").Nth(2).Left(1),
  "."
)

There might me other ways to do this too … But I don’t have the time to explore this further right now …

[Robin_Bigio]

Amazing! Can I ask why you need the thisRow portion? For edification purposes

[Paul_Danyliuk]

Third option is to do RegexReplace():

thisRow.[Full Name].RegexReplace("(?<= .).+", ".")

i.e. replace all characters that come after a space and any character with a dot.

[Pch]

@Paul_Danyliuk

Third option is to do RegexReplace() :

thisRow.[Full Name].RegexReplace("(?<= .).+", ".")

Thank you @Paul_Danyliuk ! This is exactly where I didn’t have the time to go !

---

@Robin_Bigio

Can I ask why you need the thisRow portion?

thisRow.[Full Name] is the value in your column [Full Name] for thisRow . It’s the text you’ve entered in [Full Name] .

This text value is then Split() by Space (" ") which returns a list of text values.

E.g.: for your very first row thisRow.[Full Name] is Cristi Ramos Cevallos

thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ")

… returns

Cristi,Ramos,Cevallos

From this list, we keep the very first value which is done with this part of the formula

thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ").Nth(1)

which in this case returns

Cristi

… And then to abbreviate the 2nd word from this list of text values we Split() the text value in [Full Name] by Space (" ") but keep only the 2nd word (Nth(2)) and from the left, we keep 1 character (Left(1)).
In its entirety this part of the formula is …

thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ").Nth(2).Left(1)

And in this case it returns

R

All that’s missing is the period (.) which is added directly either in the Template part of Format() or as just another text in Concatenate() .

And the final result is:

Cristi R.

For the RegexReplace() @Paul_Danyliuk suggested, well, it does exactly what Paul said

@Paul_Danyliuk

replace all characters that come after a space and any character with a dot.

… using the regular expression “(?<= .).+” which in RegEx terms is a Positive Lookbehind , in the text value in [Full Name] it will match whatever comes after a space + 1 character (any character).

For your very first row where thisRow.[Full Name] is Cristi Ramos Cevallos the match is :

amos Cevallos

And this match is then replace by a period (.) .

So the final result is also

Cristi R.

---

Thinking about all this, I’ve just added another option using WithName() which allows you to create a “Named value” you can then use like any other value in a formula .

In my Format() suggestion and my Concatenate() one, you can see that thisRow.[Full Name].Split(" ") is repeated twice…

Using WithName() I can calculate this value one time and then use it later in my Format() formula (for example)

thisRow.[Full Name].Concatenate().Split(" ").WithName(SplitName,
  Format(
    "{1} {2}.",
    SplitName.Nth(1),
    SplitName.Nth(2).Left(1)
  )
 )

[Jean_Pierre_Traets]

First class explanation @Pch,

[Pch]

Thank you @Jean_Pierre_Traets !

I just hope this will help @Robin_Bigio !

[Robin_Bigio]

Thanks so so much! This is amazing