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pythonstringstring-comparison
John Marston
John Marston

Reputation: 12269

Checking whether a string starts with XXXX

I would like to know how to check whether a string starts with "hello" in Python.

In Bash I usually do:

if [[ "$string" =~ ^hello ]]; then
 do something here
fi

How do I achieve the same in Python?

Upvotes: 555

Views: 514783

Answers (6)

AlexVI
AlexVI

Reputation: 149

strings behave like lists in Python so you could do:

astring = "hello world"
astring[:5] == 'hello'

Upvotes: 0

Red
Red

Reputation: 27567

I did a little experiment to see which of these methods

  • string.startswith('hello')
  • string.rfind('hello') == 0
  • string.rpartition('hello')[0] == ''
  • string.rindex('hello') == 0

are most efficient to return whether a certain string begins with another string.

Here is the result of one of the many test runs I've made, where each list is ordered to show the least time it took (in seconds) to parse 5 million of each of the above expressions during each iteration of the while loop I used:

['startswith: 1.37', 'rpartition: 1.38', 'rfind: 1.62', 'rindex: 1.62']
['startswith: 1.28', 'rpartition: 1.44', 'rindex: 1.67', 'rfind: 1.68']
['startswith: 1.29', 'rpartition: 1.42', 'rindex: 1.63', 'rfind: 1.64']
['startswith: 1.28', 'rpartition: 1.43', 'rindex: 1.61', 'rfind: 1.62']
['rpartition: 1.48', 'startswith: 1.48', 'rfind: 1.62', 'rindex: 1.67']
['startswith: 1.34', 'rpartition: 1.43', 'rfind: 1.64', 'rindex: 1.64']
['startswith: 1.36', 'rpartition: 1.44', 'rindex: 1.61', 'rfind: 1.63']
['startswith: 1.29', 'rpartition: 1.37', 'rindex: 1.64', 'rfind: 1.67']
['startswith: 1.34', 'rpartition: 1.44', 'rfind: 1.66', 'rindex: 1.68']
['startswith: 1.44', 'rpartition: 1.41', 'rindex: 1.61', 'rfind: 2.24']
['startswith: 1.34', 'rpartition: 1.45', 'rindex: 1.62', 'rfind: 1.67']
['startswith: 1.34', 'rpartition: 1.38', 'rindex: 1.67', 'rfind: 1.74']
['rpartition: 1.37', 'startswith: 1.38', 'rfind: 1.61', 'rindex: 1.64']
['startswith: 1.32', 'rpartition: 1.39', 'rfind: 1.64', 'rindex: 1.61']
['rpartition: 1.35', 'startswith: 1.36', 'rfind: 1.63', 'rindex: 1.67']
['startswith: 1.29', 'rpartition: 1.36', 'rfind: 1.65', 'rindex: 1.84']
['startswith: 1.41', 'rpartition: 1.44', 'rfind: 1.63', 'rindex: 1.71']
['startswith: 1.34', 'rpartition: 1.46', 'rindex: 1.66', 'rfind: 1.74']
['startswith: 1.32', 'rpartition: 1.46', 'rfind: 1.64', 'rindex: 1.74']
['startswith: 1.38', 'rpartition: 1.48', 'rfind: 1.68', 'rindex: 1.68']
['startswith: 1.35', 'rpartition: 1.42', 'rfind: 1.63', 'rindex: 1.68']
['startswith: 1.32', 'rpartition: 1.46', 'rfind: 1.65', 'rindex: 1.75']
['startswith: 1.37', 'rpartition: 1.46', 'rfind: 1.74', 'rindex: 1.75']
['startswith: 1.31', 'rpartition: 1.48', 'rfind: 1.67', 'rindex: 1.74']
['startswith: 1.44', 'rpartition: 1.46', 'rindex: 1.69', 'rfind: 1.74']
['startswith: 1.44', 'rpartition: 1.42', 'rfind: 1.65', 'rindex: 1.65']
['startswith: 1.36', 'rpartition: 1.44', 'rfind: 1.64', 'rindex: 1.74']
['startswith: 1.34', 'rpartition: 1.46', 'rfind: 1.61', 'rindex: 1.74']
['startswith: 1.35', 'rpartition: 1.56', 'rfind: 1.68', 'rindex: 1.69']
['startswith: 1.32', 'rpartition: 1.48', 'rindex: 1.64', 'rfind: 1.65']
['startswith: 1.28', 'rpartition: 1.43', 'rfind: 1.59', 'rindex: 1.66']

I believe that it is pretty obvious from the start that the startswith method would come out the most efficient, as returning whether a string begins with the specified string is its main purpose.

What surprises me is that the seemingly impractical string.rpartition('hello')[0] == '' method always finds a way to be listed first, before the string.startswith('hello') method, every now and then. The results show that using str.partition to determine if a string starts with another string is more efficient then using both rfind and rindex.

Another thing I've noticed is that string.rfind('hello') == 0 and string.rindex('hello') == 0 have a good battle going on, each rising from fourth to third place, and dropping from third to fourth place, which makes sense, as their main purposes are the same.

Here is the code:

from time import perf_counter

string = 'hello world'
places = dict()

while True:
    start = perf_counter()
    for _ in range(5000000):
        string.startswith('hello')
    end = perf_counter()
    places['startswith'] = round(end - start, 2)

    start = perf_counter()
    for _ in range(5000000):
        string.rfind('hello') == 0
    end = perf_counter()
    places['rfind'] = round(end - start, 2)

    start = perf_counter()
    for _ in range(5000000):
        string.rpartition('hello')[0] == ''
    end = perf_counter()
    places['rpartition'] = round(end - start, 2)

    start = perf_counter()
    for _ in range(5000000):
        string.rindex('hello') == 0
    end = perf_counter()
    places['rindex'] = round(end - start, 2)
    
    print([f'{b}: {str(a).ljust(4, "4")}' for a, b in sorted(i[::-1] for i in places.items())])

Upvotes: 14

user1767754
user1767754

Reputation: 25094

In case you want to match multiple words to your magic word, you can pass the words to match as a tuple:

>>> magicWord = 'zzzTest'
>>> magicWord.startswith(('zzz', 'yyy', 'rrr'))
True

startswith takes a string or a tuple of strings.

Upvotes: 67

RanRag
RanRag

Reputation: 49567

aString = "hello world"
aString.startswith("hello")

More info about startswith.

Upvotes: 851

Aseem Yadav
Aseem Yadav

Reputation: 778

Can also be done this way..

regex=re.compile('^hello')

## THIS WAY YOU CAN CHECK FOR MULTIPLE STRINGS
## LIKE
## regex=re.compile('^hello|^john|^world')

if re.match(regex, somestring):
    print("Yes")

Upvotes: 33

Shawabawa
Shawabawa

Reputation: 2597

RanRag has already answered it for your specific question.

However, more generally, what you are doing with

if [[ "$string" =~ ^hello ]]

is a regex match. To do the same in Python, you would do:

import re
if re.match(r'^hello', somestring):
    # do stuff

Obviously, in this case, somestring.startswith('hello') is better.

Upvotes: 142

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