Synopsis:
   $before([<count>] <char> <text>)

Technical:
   This functions returns the portion of <text> before the <count>th instance
   of any of the characters in <char>.  The <count> argument is optional and
   must be a non-zero integer value to be accepted.  If <count> is a positive
   integer, the counting begins at the beginning of <text>.  If <count> is a 
   negative integer, the counting begins at the end of <text>.  If <count> is
   not provided, then the function will act as if <count> were 1.

Practical:
   Sometimes it is useful to break apart strings that you know have a certain
   format, but you don't know where the characters are.  The $userhost() 
   function returns a "user@host", and if you want to get the username out
   of that, you can do $before(@ $userhost()) [everything before the first @].
   If you want to get the hostname out of that, see the help files for the 
   $after() function.

Returns:
   The input string <text> before the <count>th occurance of any character
	in <char>.  The default value for <count> is 1.

Examples:
   $before(@ hop!jnelson@wicked.neato.org)     returns "hop!jnelson"
   $before(-1 ! hop!jnelson@wicked.neato.org)  returns "hop"
   $before(-2 . hop!jnelson@wicked.neato.org)  returns "hop!jnelson@wicked"
   $before(2 . hop!jnelson@wicked.neato.org)   
					returns "hop!jnelson@wicked.neato"
   $before(3 !@. hop!jnelson@wicked.neato.org) returns "hop!jnelson@wicked"
