How to find which comes first: ' " ', '(', or ')'?

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have a string, and I want to find which one of the following 3 characters come first (ie, is on the left-most side of a given string) ?

for example:

qwert(ui)"  should return (
qwerty"(ff) should return "
qwer)()("   should return )
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and so on.

THX

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.