Deleting String data

[Seb_86]

Hi,

i am pretty new to stata and would now like to find out how to remove string data by generating a new variable.

The strings (pnumber) look like this:
224242424(A)
2456474(B1)
7843535377(C)
24256809(U1)
087378935(B1)
etc..

I want to create a new variable that deletes the Brackets completey, leading to "224242424", "2456474", etc...
So far I am only able to delete one of these brackets at a time, using the command "gen pauth=subinstr(pnumber,"(B1)","",.)"

How can I delete all expression in brackets (A,B1,C,U1) at once?

Thanks in advance!

[Svend Juul]

clear
input str15 s1
"224242424(A)"
"2456474(B1)"
"7843535377(C)"
"24256809(U1)"
"087378935(B1)"
end

gen len=strpos(s1,"(")
gen s2=s1      // in case there is no parenthesis in every observation
replace s2=substr(s1,1,len-1) if len>0

. list
     +----------------------------------+
     |            s1   len           s2 |
     |----------------------------------|
  1. |  224242424(A)    10    224242424 |
  2. |   2456474(B1)     8      2456474 |
  3. | 7843535377(C)    11   7843535377 |
  4. |  24256809(U1)     9     24256809 |
  5. | 087378935(B1)    10    087378935 |
     +----------------------------------+

[Seb_86]

Thank you, worked perfectly!