subtring on a variable length field

[myboys2]

Hi

I am looking to grab the first few positions of a field before the '*" but as you can see the * is not in the same position of every record. I just want what is BEFORE the * 

Below are sample records - not sure if a substring would work and if so how?

example

card id

12345*companyname

1234*companyname

99999999*companyname

22*companyname

[Kurt_Bremser · Accepted solution]

newfield = scan(oldfield,1,"*");

[myboys2]

thank you!