How to split and sort names in PL/SQL

Question

I have a table with a Customer_Name field that holds data like:
John, Jones T, JR, MD
James, Doe M, MD
Jane, Dee, MD
I need to insert this date into a new table with three fields that hold Full Name, Fname, and Lname and sort this data by last name. Some rows have middle initial, others has prifix initial and some have no middle at all. All have the MD at the end.
I am only interested with the FullName, Fname and LName.
Example
FullName, Fname LName
John, Jones T, JR, MD John Jones
Any ideas how to do this using PL/SQL?
Edited by: user13086849 on Jul 7, 2010 1:18 PM

Answer 1

user13086849 wrote:
I wanted my final inserted table to look las the following.
FullName should contain all the names John, Jones T, JR, MD
Fnam only Fast name John
Lname only Last name Jones
FullName
John, Jones T, JR, MD
Fname
John
LName
Jones
Any ideas how to do this using PL/SQL?
Edited by: user13086849 on Jul 7, 2010 1:21 PM
select
   some_string,
   regexp_substr(some_string, '[^,| ]+', 1, 1) as first_name,
   regexp_substr(some_string, '[^,| ]+', 1, 2) as last_name
from
   select 'John, Jones T, JR, MD'   as some_string from dual union all
   select 'James, Doe M, MD'        as some_string from dual union all
   select 'Jane, Dee, MD'           as some_string from dual
SOME_STRING           FIRST_NAME           LAST_NAME
John, Jones T, JR, MD John                 Jones
James, Doe M, MD      James                Doe
Jane, Dee, MD         Jane                 Dee
3 rows selected.
Elapsed: 00:00:00.97
TUBBY_TUBBZ?