try string1 = "My name is alex" string2 = "My name is alex, and I like pie"
if string2.startswith(string1): process() or if you want to match a set number of characters you can use a slice: if string2[:15] == string1[:15]: process() or if you dont care where the characters appear in the string, beginning, middle, end, etc: if string2 in string1: process() Theres lots of other ways as well. http://docs.python.org/lib/string-methods.html ~Sean On Aug 7, 8:40 am, Alexnb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Okay, I have a fix for this problem, but it is messy and I think there might > be a better way. Heres an example: > > Lets say I have a string: "My name is alex" > > and I have another string "My name is alex, and I like pie". > > I want to test to see if just the "My name is alex" part is there. I don't > care about the pie part. > My first instinct was to just create a for loop and test for the string like > this: > > n = 0 > > for x in string1: > if string1[n] == string2[n] > n = n +0 > else: > break > and then later testing to see what n was = to and figuring out if it got > through the whole loop. I feel like there should be an easier way to do > this, and probably is. So Does anyone have a suggestion? > -- > View this message in > context:http://www.nabble.com/Testing-for-the-first-few-letters-of-a-string-t... > Sent from the Python - python-list mailing list archive at Nabble.com. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list