Find word before parenthesis

[Hybride]

Hi everyone,

 

Am trying to create a regular expression that finds the word before the parenthesis in user's query. This is what I mean:

 

type(object).

needthis(user'sQuery).

 

Or in a highly complex situation,

needthis(word1, word2) :- needalso(x, y), needalso(y,z).

 

Any ideas on how to do this? Help greatly appreciated. (For those of you curious, am trying to find the predicates in a prolog statement.)

[mikecampbell]

$str = "needthis(word1, word2) :- needalso(x, y), needalso(y,z).";
preg_match_all('/([a-z]+)\s*\(/i', $str, $matches);
print_r($matches[1]);