Name Abbreviation Program in C++

In this article, we are going to design a program that abbreviates the first
and middle name leaving the last name as it is.

Suppose if the user inputs the following name:

William Henry Gates

Then the output of the program would be:

W. H. Gates

Without further a due I present you with the Steps:-

1. We have declared two character arrays (strings), name[4] and abname[30],
   which stores the name input by the user and abbreviated name respectively.
   


2. Suppose if the user inputs the following name:
   
   William Henry Gates
   
   Then the two arrays would have the following values:
   
   Name[40]="William Henry Gates" (unchanged)
   
   Abname[30]=EMPTY
   


3. The next step is to store the first character of the array name[40] to the
   abname[30] array and put a dot (.) and a space( ) after it.
   


4. Next, we set-up a loop which finds space in the array name[40] (space separates
   first, middle and last names). As soon as a space is detected the character
   immediately after the space is stored to the abname[30] array, followed by
   a dot (.) and a space.
   
   Now the two arrays have these values:
   
   Name[40]=”William Henry Gates” (unchanged)
   
   Abname[30]="W. H. "
   


5. Now that we have abbreviated the first and middle name, we need to store
   the last name as it is. For this, we again search for a space, as it is found,
   the control goes to the while loop where the whole of the last name is copied
   to the abname[30] array.
   
   Now the two arrays have the following values:
   
   Name[40]=”William Henry Gates” (unchanged)
   
   Abname[30]="W. H. Gates"

Program:

   //C++ program to abbreviate first and middle name
   #include<stdio.h>
   #include<string.h>

   void main(void)
   {
   char name[40];
   char abname[30];
   int i,len,m=1,j=0;

   //puts is used to print string of characters
   //although cout is equivalent to it but gets
   //and cout should not be mixed in one program
   puts("Enter Name: ");
   //gets is used to take string input with spaces
   gets(name);
 
   //strlen is a built-in function, declared in
   //the string.h header file
   //it returns the length of a string
   len=strlen(name);

   abname[j++]=name[0];
   abname[j++]='.';
   abname[j++]=' ';

   for (i=0;i<len;i++)
     {
     if(name[i]==' ')
     if(m==1)//check to see if it is the
     //middle name
       {
       abname[j++]=name[i+1];
       abname[j++]='.';
       abname[j++]=' ';
       m=0;//middle name has been fetched
       }
     else//if it is not the middle name
       {
       while(name[i]!='\0')
       //copy characters until the end of
       //the string is reached which is
       //represented by the \0 constant
         {
         abname[j++]=name[++i];
         }
       }
     }
   abname[j++]='\0';//put the end of string constant
   puts("Abbreviated Name: ");
   puts(abname);
   }

Although this program has little or no use as it is, I don’t think there
is any harm in learning how things are done.

You may also incorporate this in other programs where you need to do such abbreviations.

Hope this helps…