Automation for Jira - RegEx to Parse Last Name from Full Name

Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM

I am needing to grab the last name from a string and have it update the Jira field. I have this working for the first name but not sure what the regex should be for the last name rule.

Here is the string:

The following records request has been submitted by Bryan Trummer :

I am just needing to {{issue.description.match}} the bold (obviously this will be variable as it's a last name).

Not sure what the regex should be as I know how to get it to skip over everything but the first name.

Darryl Lee

Ah Regex. Do you have a license?

I'm kidding of course, but RegExes are notoriously brittle.

I went over to a handy Regular Expressions Tester and came up with this

{{issue.description.match("submitted by .+ (.+) :")}}

And that seemed to work fine.

HOWEVER. It won't work for names like:

• Ray Parker Jr.
• Marshall Bruce Mathers III
• William Stanley Preston, Esq.
• Sir Brian Harold May, PhD

Oh, and it would also fail in the unlikely event that somebody's name was:

• Alexander : The Great

So, as always with Regexes, you want to think about edge cases. You could certainly add additional code to handle Jr. (and Sr.! both with and without periods!), and II, III, IV... and even Esq. and all the possible degrees somebody might have.

But yeah. It all depends on the source of the tickets. If they're being generated by something that is always sending:

The following records request has been submitted by FIRSTNAME LASTNAME :

Then this ought to work.