bizarre behavior using .lstrip

[Jeff Epler]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2003 at 10:43:27PM -0400, Jeremy Dillworth wrote:
> As an alternative you could use re.sub()
> 
> >>> import re
> >>> s = 'chg cbonn_fee'
> >>> print re.sub('chg ', '', s)
> cbonn_fee

I'd recommend avoiding regexes if this is all you're doing.  Instead,
you can write a function to do it:

    def remove_prefix(prefix, s):
	"""remove_prefix(prefix, s) -> str
    If s starts with prefix, return the part of s remaining after
    prefix.  Otherwise, return the original string"""
	if s.startswith(prefix):
	    return s[len(prefix):]
	return s

>>> for s in ("chg conn_fee", "something else", "chg x", "chg", "chg "):
...     remove_prefix("chg ", s)
... 
'conn_fee'
'something else'
'x'
'chg'
''

Jeff