String Manipulation

Hello all, I know that this has probably been discussed before and that you will tell me to go through all the back messages on the list but I really don't have time to do that because I am on a really tight schedule, but I was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers on how to pull some information out of a string. I have something like this: (Something) - is wrong with me or something - (is wrong with me) or something - (is wrong with me what I need to know how to do is take the stuff that is inside the Brackets (or partial brackets) and put them into another string the way I am currently doing it is like this: Variable names have been changed per my boss(My Boss wanted me to change them for some reason) <? $parenpos = strpos($tartist,")"); $bracketpos = strpos($tartist,"]"); if($parenpos){ $artist = trim(substr($tartist,0,$parenpos)); $title = trim(substr($tartist,$parenpos+3)); $secondparenpos = strpos($title,"("); $secondbracketpos = strpos($tartist,"["); $title = trim(substr($title,0,$secondparenpos)); }elseif($bracketpos){ $artist = chop(substr($tartist,1,$bracketpos-1)); $title = trim(substr($tartist,$bracketpos+3)); } ?> I know that there has to be a shorter version of this, can anyone help me out with it? Thank You, Mike funyon@funyon.com mmacrae@wwnet.net