Member Avatar for Donnovan

Hallo,

How can i use Regex to match names in different files.

e.g. i have 3 files with names. i need to link the matching names in the different file.

any ideas.

Edited by Donnovan
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by thines01

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This thread is about matching names across files when Dutch prefixes appear in different forms. gave the examples v/d Grote and van den Grote and is correct that a plain equality check can work — but only after canonicalizing names. Practical steps: Unicode-normalize and strip accents, lowercase, remove punctuation/extra spaces, and normalize common prefix variants (v/d, vd, v., van, van den) into a single canonical prefix or remove it depending on your matching rule.

A compact Python approach: extract prefix + core surname with a regex, normalize accents, then rebuild a canonical string to use as the key when aggregating names from multiple files.

import re
import unicodedata

PREFIX_RE = re.compile(r'^(?:\s*(v\s*/\s*d|vd|v\.|van(?:\s+den)?)\s+)?(.+)$', re.I)

def strip_accents(s):
    return ''.join(c for c in unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', s) if not unicodedata.combining(c))

def normalize(name):
    s = strip_accents(name).lower().strip()
    m = PREFIX_RE.match(s)
    prefix = (m.group(1) or '').replace('/', ' ').strip() if m else ''
    core = (m.group(2) or s)
    core = re.sub(r'[\W_]+', ' ', core).strip()
    if prefix in ('v d','vd','v.'):
        prefix = 'van den'
    return (prefix + ' ' + core).strip()

Use the returned canonical value as the dictionary key when scanning each file; names that map to the same key are matches. For fuzzy or OCR-affected data, consider difflib.get_close_matches or a Levenshtein-based library. Beware: cultural name rules vary — sometimes prefixes are ignored for sorting, sometimes not — so validate expansions (e.g., v. → van vs v/d → van den) against your dataset.

Python regex docs: https://docs.python.org/3/library/re.html. Background on Dutch name prefixes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_name.

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Member Avatar for arunkumars

but why do u want a regex for that ?

use an if condition, get each file name, use.ToLower() or ToUpper, n then compare if they are equal.

This is what i understood as your requirement.

Member Avatar for Donnovan

what is the Regex for a name like (v/d Grote) or (van den Grote). these are dutch surnames

Member Avatar for thines01

So, you want one Regex to be applied to multiple files?

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