Drowning in a teacup?

Sat Apr 2 01:45:31 EDT 2016

Fillmore wrote:
> I need to scan a list of strings. If one of the elements matches the
> beginning of a search keyword, that element needs to snap to the front
> of the list.

I know this post regards the function passing, but, on you specific problem, 
can't you just ... sort the list with a custom key?
something like (new list)
 >>> sorted(['no_a', 'yes_c', 'no_b', 'yes_z', 'no_y', 'yes_x'],
 ... key=lambda e: not e.startswith('yes'))
 ['yes_c', 'yes_z', 'yes_x', 'no_a', 'no_b', 'no_y']
or (in place)
 >>> l = ['no_a', 'yes_c', 'no_b', 'yes_z', 'no_y', 'yes_x']
 >>> l.sort(key=lambda e: not e.startswith('yes'))
 >>> l
 ['yes_c', 'yes_z', 'yes_x', 'no_a', 'no_b', 'no_y']
-- 
By ZeD