How to separate names into first last and middle initial

[lenora]

Im trying to Separate Last name, First Name and Middle Initial. File is csv format, here is an example:

A0001,3,Y,13,LU, 
A0001,3,Y,13,CLARK P, 
A0001,3,Y,13,SMITH JOHN, 
A0001,3,Y,13,BEAL KRISS J, 
A0001,3,Y,13,THOMAS A CLIFF C, 
A0001,3,Y,13,DEW III ROBERT H, 

Output fields :

               Last name               First name           Initial    
                  LU                     
                  CLARK                   P  
                  SMITH                   JOHN  
                  BEAL                    KRISS                J  
                  THOMAS A                CLIFF                C  
                  DEW III                 ROBERT               H 

Thanks In Advance.

[Aimee Bailey]

Normally all you need to do is read split up the data by line breaks, then by the comma. Heres a simple function that can do that:

Public Function ReadCSV(ByVal data As String) As List(Of String())
        Dim result As New List(Of String())
        Dim lines As String() = data.Split(vbCrLf.ToString())
 
        For Each line As String In lines
            result.Add(line.Split(New Char() {","}, _
                                  StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries))
        Next
 
        Return result
    End Function
 

And to use it:

Dim data As String = "A0001,3,Y,13,LU, " & vbCrLf & _
                          "A0001,3,Y,13,CLARK P, " & vbCrLf & _
                          "A0001,3,Y,13,SMITH JOHN, " & vbCrLf & _
                          "A0001,3,Y,13,BEAL KRISS J, " & vbCrLf & _
                          "A0001,3,Y,13,THOMAS A CLIFF C, " & vbCrLf & _
                          "A0001,3,Y,13,DEW III ROBERT H, "
 
        For Each row In ReadCSV(data)
            ListBox1.Items.Add(row(4))
        Next
 

[!NoItAll]

Seems to me that you've been asked to fix broken data. If the firstname, lastname and middle initial were not entered in specific fields for their respective purposes - there is no clean way to retrieve it that way.
You will inevitably run into examples like
John Smith III
and
Smith John III
or
Smith III John

So unless you are going to read each entry and clean up the data - then you will likely wind up with some percentage of incorrectly mapped fields. If there's not a lot of data - fine, do it by hand. If there is, yikes.