13 – String prefixes and suffixes

Strings have four convenience methods to replace some slicing: startswith, endswith, removeprefix, and removesuffix.

These methods are preferred over the slicing alternatives because they are more convenient and more readable. (The methods removeX require Python 3.9+.)

Here are two examples operating on the start of a string:

string = "Hello, world!"
print(string.startswith("Hello"))
# True
print(string.removeprefix("Hello"))
# , world!

The methods startswith and endswith also accept a tuple of strings to check:

string = "abracadabra"
possible_prefixes = ("aa", "ab", "ac")
print(string.startswith(possible_prefixes))
# True