From: Robo <robo@...>
Date: 2005-10-08T19:41:51+09:00
Subject: Re: Code for title-casing (US) snail addresses?

This Perl code deals with Mc, Mac, O', van, von, etc, might be 
worthwhile to look into:

http://search.cpan.org/~summer/Lingua-EN-NameCase-1.13/NameCase.pm

Robo

rpardee@gmail.com wrote:
> And thanks again!
> 
> If I can beg your indulgence a bit further... I'm having trouble
> elaborating this so it does the right thing for street names like
> 'McGrath'.  The simpler version is:
> 
> def prettify(address)
>    abbreviations  = %w(PO NE NW SE SW)
>    prefixes2      = %w(Mc O' D')
>    prefixes3      = %w(Mac)
>    address.gsub!(/(\d)([A-Z]+)/) { $1 + $2.downcase }
>    address.gsub(/[A-Z]+/) do |w|
>       # abbreviations.include?(w) ? w :  w.capitalize
>       if abbreviations.include?(w) then
>          w
>       else
>          w.capitalize
>       end
>    end
> end
> 
> Which works admirably, except it gives back "Mcgrath", rather than
> "McGrath".
> 
> I *thought* I'd be able to tack a second Array.include? on there, like
> so:
> 
> def prettify(address)
>    abbreviations  = %w(PO NE NW SE SW)
>    prefixes2      = %w(Mc O' D')
>    prefixes3      = %w(Mac)
>    address.gsub!(/(\d)([A-Z]+)/) { $1 + $2.downcase }
>    address.gsub(/[A-Z]+/) do |w|
>       # abbreviations.include?(w) ? w :  w.capitalize
>       if abbreviations.include?(w) then
>          w
>       else
>          w.capitalize
>       end
>       if prefixes2.include?(w[0..1]) then
>          w[2..2] = w[2..2].upcase
>       end
>    end
> end
> 
> But when I do that, calls like prettify("20 E MCGRAW ST") just return
> "20"
> 
> I've read over the gsub docs, but don't see why the above does not work
> as expected.  Anybody got a clue for me?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -Roy
>