Return no value when only a first initial is present?

[-Lisa-]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been running into this a lot lately....

 

I have several customers that call out to a recipient's first name on their VDP pieces. Many of these customers have mailing lists which consist of records that have only a first initial instead of a full name. I'd like to be able to return no value in these instances and I'm at a loss as to how to get JavaScript to determine whether there is a full name or only one initial in a given record.

 

Anyone have any suggestions?

 

Thanks in advance!!

[Dan Korn]

Is the first initial in its own "FirstName" field, or is it part of a field containing the last name as well? If you could provide a few records of sample data, that would be helpful.

[-Lisa-]

Hi Dan,

 

No, the first initial is part of the original FirstName field. For instance, here is a sample of four records:

 

FirstName LastName

John Smith

M Jones

Joe Martin

L Miller

 

I need to be able to write a rule which will determine which records have only a first initial as opposed to a full name and return a null value.

 

Thanks!

[tobarstep]

Hi Dan,

 

No, the first initial is part of the original FirstName field. For instance, here is a sample of four records:

 

FirstName LastName

John Smith

M Jones

Joe Martin

L Miller

 

I need to be able to write a rule which will determine which records have only a first initial as opposed to a full name and return a null value.

 

Thanks!

 

I don't know if an actual Null value is what you want; an empty string would probably be better. If it's always either a single initial or a full name you could use something along the lines of this:

 

return (Field("FirstName").length==1) ? "" : Field("FirstName");

[-Lisa-]

I don't know if an actual Null value is what you want; an empty string would probably be better. If it's always either a single initial or a full name you could use something along the lines of this:

 

return (Field("FirstName").length==1) ? "" : Field("FirstName");

 

I think this is close to what I'm looking for, thanks! I tried entering it exactly as entered but I'm receiving a syntax error. Also, I want to add a line where if the First Name field is empty, it also returns an empty string. Normally I can compose this into a rule with no problem but I'm not sure how to include it in the code above.....

[tobarstep]

I think this is close to what I'm looking for, thanks! I tried entering it exactly as entered but I'm receiving a syntax error. Also, I want to add a line where if the First Name field is empty, it also returns an empty string. Normally I can compose this into a rule with no problem but I'm not sure how to include it in the code above.....

 

You could just change your comparison to accommodate an empty string:

return (Field("FirstName").length<=1) ? "" : Field("FirstName");

 

What is the error you are getting? Maybe your field isn't called FirstName?

[-Lisa-]

 

What is the error you are getting? Maybe your field isn't called FirstName?

 

I changed the name of my field to correspond with my datafile so that wasn't it. I wasn't really familiar with the format you provided for the rule so I tried using your components to build a JS rule I was more familiar with. I think that's probably why it wasn't working. Once I copied and pasted the new code you provided adding a provision for an empty string, it worked!

 

Thank you so much for helping me through this!

[esmith]

This:

return (Field("FirstName").length<=1) ? "" : Field("FirstName");

is "shorthand" for this:

if (Field("FirstName").length<=1) {
  return "";
  }
else return Field("FirstName");