Concatenating strings w/ character with while loops

I need to concatenate the elements of firstname until it contains the whole first name(nate) of myname.

myname = 'Nate Johnson';
firstname = '';
length(myname)
f = strcat(myname, g);
while length(myname) < 7
  firstname = myname;
  x = myname;
end
disp(x)

[Walter Roberson]

while length(myname) < 7
  firstname = myname;
  x = myname;
end

Inside your loop, you are not changing myname, so if your loop starts going at all, your loop will never end.

Answer 1

[dpb]

>> myname = 'Nate Johnson';
>> split(myname)
ans =
  2×1 cell array
    {'Nate'   }
    {'Johnson'}
>> 

presuming the next step would be to also isolate lastname.

Or, alternatively

>> firstname=extractBefore(myname,' ')
firstname =
    'Nate'
>>