Newbie: Check first two non-whitespace characters

Thu Dec 31 13:54:23 EST 2015

On 31/12/2015 19:18, otaksoftspamtrap at gmail.com wrote:
> I need to check a string over which I have no control for the first 2 non-white space characters (which should be '[{').
>> The string would ideally be: '[{...' but could also be something like
> ' [ { ....'.
>> Best to use re and how? Something else?

Use pyparsing it is straight forward:
 >>> from pyparsing import Suppress, restOfLine
 >>> mystring = Suppress('[') + Suppress('{') + restOfLine
 >>> result = mystring.parse(' [ { .... I am learning pyparsing' )
 >>> print result.asList()
['.... I am learning pyparsing']
You'll get your string inside the list.
Hope this help see pyparsing doc for in depth study.
Karim