PHP email Piping get 'to' field - php

Question

I am trying to use email piping with PHP.
I have it working except I can't get the 'To' field.
I am using the following PHP code:
#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?php
// read from stdin
$fd = fopen("php://stdin", "r");
$email = "";
while (!feof($fd))
{
$email .= fread($fd, 1024);
$to1 = explode ("\nTo: ", $email);
$to2 = explode ("\n", $to1[1]);
$to = str_replace ('>', '', str_replace('<', '', $to2[0]));
}
fclose($fd);
mail('email#example.com','From my email pipe!','"' . $to . '"');
?>
If I use a email address (for example: john#smith.com) and send a email to my email address that is forwarded to my PHP piping script (pipe.php) I want it to be able to get who the email was sent to.
For Example:
john#smith.com emails my forwarding email that goes to my PHP piping script (bob#example.com) I want it to return just the bob part only without the #example.com
What happens now is that it returns the whole email address such as "bob#example.com" and I want it to only return bob (without any talking marks).
I have tried using this:
$to = $to.split("#");
but I seem to get an error that says: split() expects at least 2 parameters.
That gets sent to the person who sent the email.
Does anyone know how to do this or know what I might be doing wrong?
This is my first time using Piping in PHP, so if I am doing something wrong please let me know.

Answer 1

Ended up using:
$to1 = explode ("\nTo: ", $email);
$to2 = explode ("\n", $to1[1]);
$to = str_replace ('>', '', str_replace('<', '', $to2[0]));
list($toa, $tob) = explode('#', $to);
then changed the mail to:
mail('email#example.com','From my email pipe!','"' . $toa . '"');