Help extracting data from a string

[AsaSchool]

Hey all,
I have a situation where I need to extract a name from a query string. Normally I would use substr() to extract the data I need but this is a different situation. I have a database with data such as this:

name (id number) phone - fax
namename (id number) phone - cell - fax

They are different with every row and I need to extract just the data (name) up until the beginning of the "(id number)" part. I know there is a way to do this by telling php to give me all of the data up to the "(", but I cannot figure out how to do this. Can anybody help?

Thanks in advance

[laserlight]

Use regular expressions with [man]preg_match/man.

[toshog]

or just look for the first appearance of '(' and use that position to delimit the substring.