Moving “last name” from last to first in the Attribute Table

Question

How do you get e.g. "John D. Doe" to "Doe, John D." in the AT using VB Scripting without going individually going through each line? I am using ArcGIS 9.3.

I should note that not all the names are the same; they are different. Is it possible to select those in the column with different names and just reverse the "first, last name" to "last name, first"?

Answer 1

One option would be using the field calculator. It does go through every line, but I'm not sure I understand how you would do this without iterating through the table in some manner. I am not good at VB Script, but you can use the Split function to separate based on the first space in the string (assuming all names follow that structure), and it should be something like this:

EDIT: Apologies to the opening poster, I actually got it all wrong. Here is my best attempt at a VB script that will put the last word in a space-delimited string at the beginning with a comma and then add the rest, but I am getting a syntax error. If you can find it, please edit this to be correct! I will continue to poke at it until then.

Function switchpos(ByVal theString As String) As String
    Dim theArray() As String
    Dim theFinal as String
    theArray() = Split(theString, " ", -1)
    For i = LBound(theArray) To UBound(theArray)-1
        theFinal = theFinal & theArray(i)
    Next
    switchpos = theArray(UBound(theArray)) & ", " & theFinal
    Return switchpos
End Function

I'm still working on a good method to get the rest of the variable strings added up. If you want a quick stopgap in python, plug the following into your Codeblock:

def nameswitch(theString):
names = theString.Split()
b = ""
for name in names:
    if(name == names[-1]):
        continue
    b = b+name+" "
return names[-1]+", "+b

And put this in the execution block:

namswitch([FIELD])

The previous code took the Table value STOCK LN FREEDOM and returned FREEDOM, STOCK LN.

Is that what you're looking for?

Answer 2

If you're fortnuate enough that every single name is in the format "First M. Last", you'll be able to use ". " as the delimeter, and use the following expression in the Field Calculator:

Split( [NAME],". ")(1) & ", " & Split( [NAME], ". ")(0) & "."

However, if the names are not all in that same format, you will need a more complex method like Nathanus's revised one.

Answer 3

Try this. I might have missed something but I tried to account for the "Middle" section.

Codeblock pre logic:

def swapNames(name):
    nameList = name.split()
    first = nameList[0]
    middle = nameList[1:-1]
    last = nameList[-1]
    z = ""
    for n in middle:
        z += n + " "

    return str(last) + ", " + str(first) + " " + str(z)

Bottom section

swapNames( !nameTest!)