To Explode or not to Explode

I would like to be able to have a simple list of all the authors on the site in this sort of format.

firstname ‘nick’ lastname, firstname2 ‘nick2’ lastname2,

I do not want them displayed as links and I would like to exclude the authors with zero posts.

My question is would it be better to do a direct database call to get this information and sort it how I want? Or should I use the <?php list_authors(); ?> tag to get the information and then use the explode function in PHP to break apart the returned information and then sort it how I want?

Currently I am tempted to use the explode function since I think it would be easier however it is a messy hack. Are their any problems doing it this way? What do you guys suggest?