Best way to do this?

[Moh]

What would be the best way to do the following:
In a shoutbox, you type in "/ban Jack", whats the best way of checking if:
/ban is at the beginning of the string

So if someone types in "the command is /ban jack" it wont do anything?

[Invent]

<?php

$string = '/ban lol';

if( preg_match( '/^\/ban (.*)$/i', $string, $match ) )
{

    $username = $match[ 1 ];
    echo $username;

}

?>

[Moh]

<?php

$string = '/ban lol';

if( preg_match( '/^\/ban (.*)$/i', $string, $match ) )
{

    $username = $match[ 1 ];
    echo $username;

}

?>

Thank you Simon