I get the feeling we're all misunderstanding what you're trying to do. Just to clarify... are you trying to strip off everything in $salutation between two parentheses? In other words, if $salutation is "Dear Mr. Smith (you ignorant twit)", then you want to strip off "(you ignorant twit)", so that $salutation contains "Dear Mr. Smith ", and "(you ignorant twit)" is saved in some other variable, right?

I ask this because that's certainly the question everyone else is answering for you.