Wildcards

[jobesd]

I have a password file and I want to delete the row if a user is found but I tried ^ and I can't seam to get it to work. The user is in plain text but the pass is encrypted. what can I use as a wildcard.

$search = "$nuser:wildcard";

$search = "^$nuser";<--- This would not work
echo "$search";

$file=fopen($passfile, "r+");

while ($line=fgets($file, 1050))
{
$edited_line=chop($line);
if ($edited_line != $search)
{
$temppass .= $line;
}
}
fclose($file);
$file=fopen($temppassfile, "w+");
fwrite($file, $temppass);
fclose($file);
$result = mv $temppassfile $passfile;