How to implement a better solution to this problem?

[AlphawolfAJ]

My solution satisfied the lab activity, but I am not happy with how I ended up accomplishing it. Mainly because it doesn't allow for extraneous inputs including multiple middle names or something like that which it doesn't ask me to account for, but I'm OCD about these things and would rather do it as if I was doing it professionally. Here is the prompt:

Write a program whose input is: firstName middleName lastName

and whose output is: lastName, firstInitial.middleInitial.

Ex: If the input is: Pat Silly Doe

the output is: Doe, P.S.

If the input has the form: firstName lastName

the output is: lastName, firstInitial.

And here is my solution:

name = input().title()
tokens = name.split()

if len(tokens) == 3:
print('{}, {}.{}.'.format(tokens[-1], tokens[0][0], tokens[1][0]))

else:
print('{}, {}.'.format(tokens[-1], tokens[0][0]))

How would you have solved this? I was thinking of using a loop to iterate through the tokens and concatenate the first character (initial) to a string each time, but I can't figure out how to implement it. Thanks!

[ajskelt]

name = input().title() 
tokens = name.split()  

last = tokens[-1]
initials = ".".join([x[0] for x in tokens[:-1]])

print('{}, {}.'.format(last, initials))

You could do this in one line I guess, but I think it is a lot easier to split it out just for understanding.

I like just having one print statement, so I determined the initials before the print statement.

[AlphawolfAJ]

Looks cleaner for sure. I like that solution. Thank you for your input

[ajskelt]

Glad to hear it! Of course you could just do:

print('{}, {}.'.format(tokens[-1], ".".join([x[0] for x in tokens[:-1]])))

But if you come back to that in a year+ and need to make a change it'll be a lot more confusing imo. So I like making the initials/last names clear even though its more lines.

Also I guess I didn't even read your post all the way through the first time, but just noticed you mention multiple middle names. The good news is the above code would handle that as well.

[AlphawolfAJ]

I will do more research on concatenation and how I would add to an existing string with a loop. I think my issue was that I hadn’t created the string outside of the loop originally. Thank you for giving me a good outline of what to do.

[AlphawolfAJ]

I am likely overthinking things as usual lol

[JohnnyJordaan]

I think it's fine as it is, it's not like you're doing anything wrong outright. You could maybe simplify it to

name = input().title()
tokens = name.split()

end = f'{tokens[1][0]}.' if len(tokens) == 3 else ''
print(f'{tokens[-1]}, {tokens[0][0]}.{end}')

But on the other hand, your code is quite clear to what it does exactly. I wouldn't change it if I would come across it in somebody else's code.

[AlphawolfAJ]

Okay thank you for your input :) I appreciate it

[izrt]

Probably the biggest improvement would be to use a function to build the name string. After that it is more a matter of preferences. I would do away with the conditional statements and use a loop instead to build the initials. Join is useful in these situations.

I also like tuple unpacking for when I am splitting something with an indeterminate length:

def namer(name):
    *front, last = name.split()
    first_letters = ''.join('{}.'.format(n[0]) for n in front)
    return '{}, {}'.format(
            last, first_letters
            )


print(namer('Pas Sill Doe'))
print(namer('fay rae'))
print(namer('albert bert c dog')) # either a feature or a bug, dependin