Most Pythonic way to remove first match of potential leading strings?

Question

This is a bit difficult to describe, but I'll do my best. In Python, I can use string.startswith(tuple) to test for multiple matches. But startswith only returns a boolean answer, whether or not it found a match. It is equivalent to any(string.startswith(substring) for substring in inputTuple). I am looking for a way to return the rest of the string. So, for example:

>>> fruits = ['apple', 'orange', 'pear']
>>> words1 = 'orange, quagga, etc.'
>>> words2 = 'giraffe, apple, etc.'
>>> magicFunc(words1, fruits)
', quagga, etc.'
>>> magicFunc(words2, fruits)
False

(I'm also okay with the function returning the first matching string, or a list of matching strings, or anything that would enable me to determine where to cut off the string.)

Right now I have this:

remainingString(bigString, searchStrings):
 for sub in searchStrings:
 if bigString.startswith(sub):
 return bigString.partition(sub)[0]

Ick. Is there anything better?

• xlecoustillier: Shouldn't this question be asked on Code review.SE ?

Answer 1

There's no easy way to get the info from .startswith, but you can construct a regular expression that gives you that info.

An example:

import re
prefixes = ("foo", "moo!")
# Add a ^ before each prefix to force a match at the beginning of a string;
# escape() to allow regex-reserved characters like "*" be used in prefixes.
regex_text = "(" + "|".join("^" + re.escape(x) for x in prefixes) + ")"
match = re.search(regex_text, "foobar")
print match.end()

• Hactar: Thank you very much! Regex is something I have only just started to realize the power of, and this is perfect for what I need. :)