Move matched string to end in MySQL - mysql

Question

I am doing a GROUP_CONCAT to display names in the format of
Lastname1, Firstname1; Lastname2, Firstname2
There are occasions where the lastname also contains strings enclosed in curved brackets - ( and ). Since these will get displayed in the middle of the concatenated string I'm trying to move it to the end.
My solution so far is this:
GROUP_CONCAT(
DISTINCT
CASE
WHEN UPPER(psn.surname) LIKE '%INACTIVE%' THEN CONCAT(TRIM(REPLACE(psn.surname, '(Inactive)', '')), ', ', psn.firstname, ' (Inactive)')
ELSE CONCAT(psn.surname, ', ', psn.firstname)
END
ORDER BY
CASE
WHEN UPPER(psn.surname) LIKE '%INACTIVE%' THEN CONCAT(TRIM(REPLACE(psn.surname, '(Inactive)', '')), ', ', psn.firstname, ' (Inactive)')
ELSE CONCAT(psn.surname, ', ', psn.firstname)
END
ASC
SEPARATOR '; '
) AS contacts
So far this works but it only looks for a specific string, there are also cases when the string within the curved brackets isn't Inactive and I don't want to hard code all of those.
So basically how do I move a string enclosed in curved brackets to the end of a string. I imagine regex is the best solution to this problem but I don't know how to use regex.

Answer 1

Hmmm . . . something like this might work:
GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT (CASE WHEN psn.surname LIKE '%(%'
THEN CONCAT(TRIM(SUBSTRING_INDEX(psn.surname, '(', 1)), ', ',
psn.firstname, '('
SUBSTRING_INDEX(psn.surname, '(', -1)
)
ELSE CONCAT(psn.surname, ', ', psn.firstname)
END)
ORDER BY psn.surname, psn.firstname ASC SEPARATOR '; '
) AS contacts
I didn't repeat the expression for the order by. That seems like overkill.