Match and replace depending on the regex pattern in javascript

Question

I have not been able to deploy a working process to use multiple regex patterns to match and replace the following patterns of names. I need to extract the last name, first name, middle initial or fill it with white space, and place commas between them Examples:

In:

• "HILL,ADAM APRN"
• "SMITH,JOHN B APRN"
• "JONES-WILSON,ROBERT APRN"

Out:

• "HILL,ADAM, ,APRN"
• "SMITH,JOHN,B,APRN"
• "JONES-WILSON,ROBERT, ,APRN"

The procedure I used stopped on the first name

Any assistance would greatly be appreciated.

Thank you - Matt

Answer 1

If you really need to use a regular expression, (\\w+(?:-\\w+)?),(\\w+)\\s(?:([a-zA-Z]{1})\\s)?(\\w+) will give you the captures that you need.

However, it would be much easier to use the split function like...

var name = "HILL,ADAM APRN";
var newName = name.split(/[ ,]/).join(',')

Answer 2

var str = "HILL,ADAM APRN";
var blocks = str.match(/ /g).length;
var nuStr = (blocks==1 ? (str.replace(/ /, ', ,')) : (str.replace(/ /g, ',')));