Need difficult help !

Hi all, I have a very long charachter chain which is like that : Number*link*name*Number*link*name*Number*link*name*Number*link*name* I made a php script to cut it thanks to the "*" to make a list with a number, and the name hyperlinked to the link. The thing is that after i get a data (number, link or name), i use str_replace to cut it off the chain to get the next one. But as my numbers are sometime the same, i have troubles because it cuts all the same numbers off. Can i just cut one ? Thanks a lot for reading me and maybe answer me ? :-)