>>replace horse_name with left(horse_name, at("(", horse_name)-1))
>
>This gives me a error message "command contains unrecognized phrase/keyword"
>
>Do you think that the strtran function can be used with wildcards?

Sorry, won't work. StrTran() does exactly what it's supposed to do, so if you need parentheses removed, you'll have to code around. One way to do it would be

nOcLeft=occurs("(", cYourString)
nOcRight=occurs(")", cYourString)
do while nOcLeft=nOcRight and nOcLeft>0
   nAtLeft=at("(", cYourString)
   nAtRight=at(")", cYourString)
   cYourString=stuff(cYourString, nAtLeft, nAtRight-nAtLeft+1, "")
   nOcLeft=occurs("(", cYourString)
   nOcRight=occurs(")", cYourString)
enddo