So i am working with some email header data, and for the to:, from:, cc:, and bcc: fields the email address(es) can be expressed in a number of different ways:
You can try to standardize the data
as much as possible i.e. get rid of
such things as the < and > symbols
and all of the commas after the
'.com.' You will need the commas
that separate the first and last
names.
After getting rid of the extra symbols, put every grouped email
record in a list as a string. You
can use the .com to determine where
to split the string if need be.
After you have the list of email addresses in the list of strings, you
can then further split the email
addresses using only whitespace as
the delimeter.
The final step is to determine what is the first name, what is the
last name, etc. This would be done
by checking the 3 components for: a
comma, which would indicate that it
is the last name; a . which would
indicate the actual address; and
whatever is left is the first name.
If there is no comma, then the first
name is first, last name is second,
etc.
I don't know if this is the most concise solution, but it would work and does not require any advanced programming techniques