Taking some characters

1

Hi,
I have some records and I need to take the character before '-'. for example
J055-0002.0K-00 (1000) the result will be J055
or
J055A-0002.0K-00 (1000) the result will be JO55A

what syntax should I put?
thx,

Joe

2 
create table dbo.shimsham(boozbaz nvarchar(150));

insert into dbo.shimsham
select 'J055-0002.0K-00 (1000)' union 
select 'J055A-0002.0K-00 (1000)'

select substring(boozbaz, 0, charindex('-',boozbaz))
  from dbo.shimsham
3

SELECT LEFT(column_name, CHARINDEX('-', column_name + '-') - 1), ...
FROM ...