How to find the space using substring to display initials

Question

The part of the program I'm trying to write is supposed to take the users input, which is their name, and in a listbox spit out their initials. I have so far:

Dim initials As String
Dim indexspace As Integer
initials = name.Substring(0, 1)
indexspace = name.IndexOf(" ")
lstInvoice.Items.Add(String.Format(strFormat, "Invoice ID", initials & space))

When I run the program, I can get the first initial to pop up, but I am not certain how to get the second to pop up.

Thank you very much for your assistance on this matter, it is much appreciated

Solution 1

Q: How do I find a space (" ") in a string with VB.Net?

A: String.IndexOf (" ");

Q: How do I find subsequent spaces in the string?

A: Extract the substring of everything to the right of the first space you found.

Then do an ".IndexOf (" ")" of that substring.

Until you get to the end of the string, or until you get bored :)

Solution 2

I apologize for not writing it in VB but I am more familiar with C#. There is no reason to look for the index of a space. Just split the string on the space and then pull the first letter of each of the results in the array. For simplicity, I made an assumption that it was only two words in the string but you could loop through the array of results to put out all the initials if they included a middle name:

string name = "Test User";
string[] nameParts = name.Split(' ');
string initials = nameParts[0].Substring(0, 1) + nameParts[1].Substring(0, 1);

VB Version:

 Dim name As String = "Test User"
 Dim nameParts As String() = name.Split(" ")
 Dim initials As String = nameParts(0).Substring(0, 1) & nameParts(1).Substring(0, 1)

Again this is a very simplistic approach to what you are asking. As @paxdiablo pointed out in his comments there are variations of names that will not match this pattern but you know you're program.