I\'m looking for the best reliable way to return the first and last name of a person given the full name, so far the best I could think of is the following
If you're defining first and last name as the text before the first space and after the last space, then just split the string on spaces and grab the first and last elements of the array.
However, depending on the context/scope of what you're doing, you may need to re-evaluate things - not all names around the world will meet this pattern.