Then I came up with this code, a doctoring of some from the FAQ section of this BB.

From a first-name-first @fullname, this code splits out first and last names, removes the MI-followed-by-period from the first name (if present) and gets you two or three initials as the result.

code:
$splitbetweennames = instr(@fullname," ")

	if instr(@fullname,". ")
	$splitbetweennames = instr(@fullname,". ")
	endif

$firstname = substr(@fullname,1,$splitbetweennames)

$firstnametemp = $firstname

	if instr(@fullname,". ")
	$firstnametemp = substr(@fullname,1,len($firstnametemp)-3)
	endif	

? "First name, no MI: " $firstnametemp

$lastname = ltrim(substr(@fullname,$splitbetweennames+1,len(@fullname)-$splitbetweennames))

? "Last name: " + $lastname

$firstinitial = ltrim(substr(@fullname,1,1))

$middleinitial=("")

	if instr(@fullname,".")
	$middleinitial=ltrim(substr($firstname,len($firstname)-2,2))
	endif

$lastinitial = ltrim(substr($lastname,1,1))

? "initials: " + $firstinitial + $middleinitial + $lastinitial