HTML/PHP form validation

I'm wanting to validate data that is being received from a html form using PHP.

I want PHP to manipulate a string variable (input value) so it strips it down to the first word. EG.

$name = "John Smith"

I need to know the function that would make this:

$name = "John"

therefore leaving you with only the first word so this could be later used to query a database.

I've looked on the Internet and through my books but am unable to easily find a solution for this so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Guy

You could [man]explode/man the string on the space character, then use the first element of the resulting array.

The following will give you everything up to the first space:

$name = "John Smith";
$name = substr($name, 0, strpos($name, ' '));
echo $name; //John

You could also use the explode function to get an array of all the words in the string:

$name = "John Smith";
$words = explode(' ', $name);
echo $words[0]; //John
echo $words[1]; //Smith

Thank you, both ways work - fantastic!